Time & Place: Feb. 28, Thursday, 2:00pm, Room 9409

Speaker: Dr. Jie Zhao (赵杰), Purdue University

Title: Search for the chiral magnetic effect in relativistic heavy-ion
collisions

Abstract: Metastable domains of fluctuating topological charges can
change the chirality of quarks and induce local P and CP violations in
quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This can lead to observable charge
separation along the direction of the strong magnetic field produced in
relativistic heavy-ion collisions, a phenomenon called the chiral
magnetic effect (CME). An observation of the CME-induced charge
separation would confirm several fundamental properties of QCD, namely,
restoration of the approximate chiral symmetry, non-trivial topological
structures of the QCD vacuum, and local P and CP violations. It could
also explain the magnitude of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the
present universe. I will discuss the current status of the experimental
search for the CME, especially the recent progresses in the
understanding of the background issues, and new ideas to search for the
CME free of background contaminations.