The QED Radiative Corrections to Chiral Magnetic Effect

Abstract

We study in this paper the radiative corrections to chiral magnetic current at both zero and nonzero temperature. Our motivation is a radiative correction to the matrix element of the anomalous Ward identity in massless QED stemming from a three-loop diagram where the two photons coming from the one-loop anomalous triangle are re-scattered. Through the interplay between the Ward identity and the infrared subtlety of the fermion loop integral, we are able to reproduce the corrections known in literature in a simpler approach and obtain its contribution to the chiral magnetic current at zero temperature. At a nonzero temperature, the infrared subtlety disappeared in a static magnetic field and the three-loop diagram does not contribute to the chiral magnetic current any more. The generalization to all orders of the massless QED and the QCD corrections are discussed.