Magnetic field influence on the early time dynamics of heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

In high energy heavy-ion collisions the magnetic field is very strong right after the nuclei penetrate each other and a non-equilibrium system of quarks and gluons builds up. Even though quarks might not be very abundant initially, their dynamics must necessarily be influenced by the Lorentz force. Employing the 3+1d partonic cascade BAMPS we show that the circular Larmor movement of the quarks leads to a strong positive anisotropic flow of quarks at very soft transverse momenta. We explore the regions where the effect is visible, and explicitly show how collisions damp the effect. As a possible application we look at photon production from the flowing non-equilibrium medium.