- Accepted Paper
Parton wakes and field angular momentum in chiral QCD plasma
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 3 November, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dhc8-r85y
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 3 November, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dhc8-r85y
A fast parton moving through the quark-gluon plasma trails a wake of color fields, usually characterized through its screening cloud and the associated energy loss. Its behavior in a plasma carrying a chiral imbalance, set by a chiral chemical potential , remains largely unexplored, in particular, whether the imbalance induces a parity-odd component in the wake. We address this within chiral kinetic theory with Berry curvature corrections, at finite and zero magnetic field. The screening sector responds to only weakly, and solely through the Debye mass. The chiral imprint instead resides in a parity-odd sector comprising an azimuthal field encircling the parton, a poloidal chromo-magnetic field, and a circulating color current. All three are linear in and transverse to the velocity, and hence do no work on the parton. As the central result, these handed fields endow the wake with a net field angular momentum about the parton direction, odd in and of order – per parton. The chiral medium thereby opens a parity-odd channel connecting hard probes to the chiral and vortical structure of the plasma.
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