An effective theory for QCD with an axial chemical potential

Abstract

We consider the low energy realization of QCD in terms of meson fields when an axial chemical potential is present; a situation that may be relevant in heavy ion collisions. We shall demonstrate that the presence of an axial charge constitutes an explicit source of parity breaking. The eigenstates of strong interactions do not have a definite parity and interactions that would otherwise be forbidden compete with the familiar ones. In this work, we first focus on scalars and pseudoscalars that are described by a generalized linear sigma model; and next, we give some hints on how the Vector Meson Dominance model describes the vector sector.