@article{47435fbc00b1412ca5da148f7f2a609b,
title = "The Turbulent Chiral Magnetic Cascade in the Early Universe",
abstract = "The presence of asymmetry between fermions of opposite handedness in plasmas of relativistic particles can lead to exponential growth of a helical magnetic field via a small-scale chiral dynamo instability known as the chiral magnetic effect. Here, we show, using dimensional arguments and numerical simulations, that this process produces through the Lorentz force chiral magnetically driven turbulence. A k-2 magnetic energy spectrum emerges via inverse transfer over a certain range of wavenumbers k. The total chirality (magnetic helicity plus normalized chiral chemical potential) is conserved in this system. Therefore, as the helical magnetic field grows, most of the total chirality gets transferred into magnetic helicity until the chiral magnetic effect terminates. Quantitative results for height, slope, and extent of the spectrum are obtained. Consequences of this effect for cosmic magnetic fields are discussed.",
keywords = "dynamo, early universe, magnetic fields, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), turbulence",
author = "Axel Brandenburg and Jennifer Schober and Igor Rogachevskii and Tina Kahniashvili and Alexey Boyarsky and J{\"u}rg Fr{\"o}hlich and Oleg Ruchayskiy and Nathan Kleeorin",
note = "Funding Information: We thank Tanmay Vachaspati for useful discussions. Support through the NSF Astrophysics and Astronomy Grant Program (grant Nos. 1615100 and 1615940), the Research Council of Norway (FRINATEK grant No. 231444), the Georgian NSF FR/264/6-350/14, and the European Research Council (grant No. 694896) are gratefully acknowledged. We acknowledge the allocation of computing resources provided by the Swedish National Allocations Committee at the Center for Parallel Computers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. This work utilized the Janus supercomputer, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (award No. CNS-0821794), the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Denver, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The Janus supercomputer is operated by the University of Colorado Boulder. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.",
year = "2017",
month = aug,
day = "20",
doi = "10.3847/2041-8213/aa855d",
language = "English",
volume = "845",
journal = "Astrophysical Journal Letters",
issn = "2041-8205",
publisher = "IOP Publishing Ltd.",
number = "2",
}