Magnetic field generation from nonequilibrium phase transitions

Abstract

We study the generation of magnetic fields during the stage of particle production resulting from spinodal instabilities during phase transitions out of equilibrium. The main premise is that long-wavelength instabilities that drive the phase transition lead to strong nonequilibrium charge and current fluctuations which generate electromagnetic fields. We present a formulation based on the nonequilibrium Schwinger-Dyson equations that leads to an exact expression for the spectrum of electromagnetic fields valid for general theories and cosmological backgrounds and whose main ingredient is the transverse photon polarization out of equilibrium. This formulation includes the dissipative effects of the conductivity in the medium. As a prelude to cosmology, we study magnetogenesis in Minkowski spacetime in a theory of N charged scalar fields to lowest order in the gauge coupling and to leading order in the large N within two scenarios of cosmological relevance. The long-wavelength power spectrum for electric and magnetic fields at the end of the phase transition is obtained explicitly. It follows that equipartition between electric and magnetic fields does not hold out of equilibrium. In the case of a transition from a high-temperature phase, the conductivity of the medium severely hinders the generation of magnetic fields; however, the magnetic fields generated are correlated on scales of the order of the domain size, which is much larger than the magnetic diffusion length. The implications of the results to cosmological phase transitions driven by spinodal instabilities are discussed.