Production of a chiral magnetic anomaly with emerging turbulence and mean-field dynamo action

Abstract: In relativistic magnetized plasmas, asymmetry in the number densities of left- and right-handed fermions, i.e., a non-zero chiral chemical potential mu_5, leads to an electric current along the magnetic field. This causes a chiral dynamo instability for a uniform mu_5, but our simulations reveal a dynamo even for fluctuating mu_5 with zero mean. It produces magnetically-dominated turbulence and generates mean magnetic fields via the magnetic alpha effect. Eventually, a universal scale-invariant k^-1 spectrum of mu_5 and a k^-3 magnetic spectrum are formed independently of the initial condition.