Dynamical evolution of magnetic field in the pre-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma

Abstract: High-energy heavy-ion collisions generate extremely strong magnetic field which plays a key role in a number of novel quantum phenomena in quark-gluon plasma (QGP), such as the chiral magnetic effect (CME). However, due to the complexity in theoretical modellings of the coupled electromagnetic fields and the QGP system, especially in the pre-equilibrium stages, the lifetime of the magnetic field in the QGP medium remains undetermined. We establish, for the first time, a kinetic framework to study the dynamical decay of the magnetic field in the early stages of a weakly coupled QGP by solving the coupled Boltzmann and Maxwell equations. We find that at late times a magnetohydrodynamical description of the coupled system emerges. With respect to realistic collisions at RHIC and the LHC, we estimate the residual strength of the magnetic field in the QGP when the system start to evolve hydrodynamically.