Magnetic screening in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We show that classical chromomagnetic fields produced coherently in the initial stage of a heavy-ion collision exhibit screening. From the two-point field strength correlator we determine the magnetic mass for SU(2) to be m ~ 5 times the saturation scale. Magnetic screening leads to an intuitive understanding of the area law scaling of spatial Wilson loops observed previously. The presence of screening effects in the initial state provides a basis for defining kinetic processes in the early stage of heavy-ion collisions, with electric and magnetic masses of the same order.

References in corpus (5)

• Some Features of the Glasma
• Wilson line correlator in the MV model: relating the glasma to deep inelastic scattering
• Two-gluon correlations and initial conditions for small-x evolution
• Initial energy density and gluon distribution from the Glasma in heavy-ion collisions
• Randomness in infinitesimal extent in the McLerran-Venugopalan model

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Structure of longitudinal chromomagnetic fields in high energy collisions
• Evolution to the Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Turbulent pattern formation and diffusion in the early-time dynamics in the relativistic heavy-ion collision
• Evolution of pressures and correlations in the Glasma produced in high energy nuclear collisions
• Fluctuations of topological charge and chiral density in the early stage of high energy nuclear collisions
• Spatial Wilson loops in the classical field of high-energy heavy-ion collisions