IMSc Webinar

Search for the Chiral Magnetic Effect with isobar collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Prithwish Tribedy

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Relativistic heavy ion collisions (HICs) at the modern accelerators like
the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider provide
unique testing ground for the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at
high energies. The early stages of such collisions generate highest
densities allowed by QCD and eventually leads to the formation of a
liquid-like quark-gluon matter (QGP) that filled the microsecond-old
universe. Interestingly, the early stages of HICs also generate the
strongest known electromagnetic fields (10^18 Gauss) in the universe. The
quantum fluctuations in the early stages of such collisions amidst such
strong fields can lead to violation of local P and CP symmetries of strong
interaction. As a consequence of such extreme conditions one expects to
observe novel phenomena such as the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME). Previous
measurements of the CME remain inconclusive because of large background
contributions. In order to better control the influence of signal and
backgrounds, the STAR collaboration has recently performed a blind analysis
on a large data sample of approximately 3.8 billion isobar Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr
collisions at the center of mass energy of 200 GeV at the Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider. In this colloquium I will briefly introduce the history
of the CME search in HICs and discuss the findings from the isobar blind
analysis.