Numerical study of the chiral separation effect in two-color QCD at finite density

We study the chiral separation effect (CSE) in finite-density SU(2) lattice gauge theory with dynamical quarks. We find that the CSE is well described by the free quark result in the high-temperature quark-gluon plasma phase. As one enters the confinement regime with broken chiral symmetry at chemical potential smaller than half of the pion mass, the CSE response is gradually suppressed toward low temperatures in comparison to the free quark result. This suppression can be approximately described by assuming that the CSE current is proportional to the charge density, rather than the chemical potential, as suggested in the literature [Phys. Rev. D 97, 085020 (2018). We also provide an upper bound on the contribution of disconnected fermionic diagrams to the CSE, which is consistent with zero within our statistical errors and small compared to that of the connected diagrams. Our results are obtained mainly in the QCD-like regime of SU(2) gauge theory at low densities, and hence should be at least qualitatively applicable to QCD as well.

Automated summary

The study of the chiral separation effect (CSE) in finite-density SU(2) lattice gauge theory with dynamical quarks shows that CSE is well described by the free quark result in the high-temperature quark-gluon plasma phase, but is gradually suppressed as one enters the confinement regime. The suppression can be approximately described by assuming that the CSE current is proportional to the charge density rather than the chemical potential.