We study fermion mass correction to chiral kinetic equations in electromagnetic fields. Different from the chiral limit where fermion number density is the only independent distribution, the number and spin densities are coupled to each other for massive fermion systems. To the first order in h, we derived the quantum correction to the classical on-shell condition and the Boltzmann-type transport equations. To the linear order in the fermion mass, the mass correction does not change the structure of the chiral kinetic equations and behaves like additional collision terms. While the mass correction exists already at classical level in general electromagnetic fields, it is only a first order quantum correction in the study of chiral magnetic effect.

It is important to understand the strong external magnetic field generated at the very beginning of high energy nuclear collisions. We study the effect of the magnetic field on the charmonium yield and anisotropic distribution in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC energy. The time dependent Schrödinger equation is employed to describe the motion of cc pairs. We compare our model prediction of noncollective anisotropic parameter v2 of J/ψs with CMS data at high transverse momentum. This is the first attempt to measure the magnetic field in high energy nuclear collisions.

Recently there have been significant interests in the spin hydrodynamic generation phenomenon from multiple disciplines of physics. Such phenomenon arises from global polarization effect of microscopic spin by macroscopic fluid rotation and is expected to occur in the hot quark-gluon fluid (the "subatomic swirl") created in relativistic nuclear collisions. This was indeed discovered in experiments which however revealed an intriguing puzzle: a polarization difference between particles and anti-particles. We suggest a novel application of a general connection between rotation and magnetic field: a magnetic field naturally arises along the fluid vorticity in the charged subatomic swirl. We establish this mechanism as a new way for generating long-lived in-medium magnetic field in heavy ion collisions. Due to its novel feature, this new magnetic field provides a nontrivial explanation to the puzzling observation of a difference in spin hydrodynamic generation for particles and anti-particles in heavy ion collisions.

As the core ingredient for spin polarization, the equilibrium spin distribution function that eliminates the collision terms is derived from the detailed balance principle. The kinetic theory for interacting fermionic systems is applied to the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model at quark level. Under the semi-classical expansion with respect to $$\hbar $$ ħ , the kinetic equations for the vector and axial-vector distribution functions are obtained with collision terms. For an initially unpolarized system, spin polarization can be generated at the first order of $$\hbar $$ ħ from the coupling between the vector and axial-vector charges. Different from the classical transport theory, the collision terms in a quantum theory vanish only in global equilibrium with Killing condition.