Transverse flow induced by inhomogeneous magnetic fields in the Bjorken expansion

Abstract

We investigate the magnetohydrodynamics in the presence of an external magnetic field following the power-law decay in proper time and having spatial inhomogeneity characterized by a Gaussian distribution in one of transverse coordinates under the Bjorken expansion. The leading-order solution is obtained in the weak-field approximation, where both energy density and fluid velocity are modified. It is found that the spatial gradient of the magnetic field results in transverse flow, where the flow direction depends on the decay exponents of the magnetic field. We suggest that such a magnetic-field-induced effect might influence anisotropic flow in heavy ion collisions.