Electromagnetic spectral functions in hot and dense chirally imbalanced quark matter

Abstract: The photon self-energy from chirally imbalanced quark matter is evaluated at finite temperature and density using the real time formulation of thermal field theory. The analytic structure is explored in detail exposing the cut structure which corresponds to a variety of physical scattering and decay processes in the medium and their thresholds. The mass of the quarks in the chiral symmetry broken phase are obtained from the gap equation of the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. It is found that, in presence of finite chiral chemical potential, the chiral condensate tends to get stronger at low temperature while the opposite is observed at high values of temperature. A continuous spectrum is obtained for the electromagnetic spectral function and this is purely a finite chiral chemical potential effect.