From gluon topology to chiral anomaly: Emergent phenomena in quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

Heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and the LHC have found a new emergent phase of QCD, a strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) that is distinctively different from either the low temperature hadron phase or the very high temperature weakly coupled plasma phase. Highly nontrivial emergent phenomena occur in such sQGP and two examples will be discussed in this contribution: the magnetic component of sQGP that stems from topologically nontrivial configurations in the gluon sector; and the anomalous chiral transport that arises as macroscopic manifestation of microscopic chiral anomaly in the quark sector. For both examples, their important roles in explaining pertinent heavy-ion data will be emphasized.

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures; plenary talk at SQM2016; version to appear in the proceedings