Abstract
We report on measurements of a charge-dependent flow using a novel three-particle correlator with ALICE in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, and discuss the implications for observation of local parity violation and the Chiral Magnetic Wave (CMW) in heavy-ion collisions. Charge-dependent flow is reported for different collision centralities as a function of the event charge asymmetry. While our results are in qualitative agreement with expectations based on the CMW, the nonzero signal observed in higher harmonics correlations indicates a possible significant background contribution. We also present results on a differential correlator, where the flow of positive and negative charges is reported as a function of the mean charge of the particles and their pseudorapidity separation. We argue that this differential correlator is better suited to distinguish the differences in positive and negative charges expected due to the CMW and the background effects, such as local charge conservation coupled with strong radial and anisotropic flow.
Highlights
Parity (P) is a major symmetry of classical physics, being present in rigid-body dynamics, classical electrodynamics, and gravity
We present the corresponding measurements for higher harmonics flow that should be largely insensitive to the chiral magnetic wave (CMW) but sensitive to the possible background effects
Negative particle anisotropic flow on the event charge asymmetry is presented for different centralities in Pb-Pb collisions
Summary
Parity (P) is a major symmetry of classical physics, being present in rigid-body dynamics, classical electrodynamics, and gravity. In the development of quantum mechanics, parity conservation was assumed. It was not until the 1950s [1] that the possibility of parity violation was considered, and soon after it was definitively demonstrated experimentally in nuclear decays [2,3]. P and CP violation as a general feature of quantum field theories was first explored in the 1970s [6,7], and a proposal to use heavy-ion collisions as a tool for studying P and CP violation first appeared as early as the 1980s [8]. Specific proposals for a search for local P-violating effects in heavy-ion collisions appeared in the last decade [9,10,11,12,13,14]
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