Retarded Correlators of Charge Transport in a Magnetic Field

Abstract

We study charge transport in a magnetized relativistic plasma using kinetic theory within the relaxation-time approximation. By exactly solving the linearized Boltzmann equation in a uniform magnetic field, we obtain an analytic solution for the distribution function in terms of Bessel functions. Using this solution, we compute the full set of retarded current-current correlators and verify the Ward identities. In the hydrodynamic limit, we extract the charge diffusion modes, demonstrating that the transverse diffusion coefficient is strongly suppressed by the magnetic field, scaling as $1/B_0^2$ in the strong-field regime, while the longitudinal diffusion remains unaffected. Furthermore, we analyze the non-hydrodynamic branch cuts in the complex frequency plane, determining their kinematic thresholds and identifying the underlying wave-particle interactions as longitudinal Landau damping and transverse cyclotron damping.

Comments: 22 pages, 3 figures; comments welcome