World’s strongest electric fields could be produced by heavy-ion collisions

A theoretical analysis from researchers at Japan’s largest scientific research agency, RIKEN, suggests that intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions can give birth to the strongest electromagnetic fields ever observed.

Heavy ion collisions involve colliding large atomic nuclei at high velocities. Such collisions generate strong electric fields for a brief period, enabling scientists to study behaviors and phenomena that are otherwise remain hidden.

For instance, these observations can contribute to advances in strong field physics, a branch of science focused on understanding the behavior of matter under strong electromagnetic fields created by intense lasers.

“Our results imply that heavy-ion collisions can be used as a new tool to explore strong-field physics in the nonperturbative regime,” the study authors note .

Plasma at intermediate energy levels is the answer

According to the Standard Model of particle physics, high-energy conditions, such as those found in heavy-ion collisions, can turn matter into a state known as quark-gluon plasma.

This plasma is created when very hot and dense matter is compressed, enabling quarks and gluons to move freely, unlike in normal conditions where they are confined within protons and neutrons.

Quarks are particles that combine to form protons and neutrons, and gluons are elementary particles that act like glue, binding the quarks together. Together, quarks and gluons form the core of most of the matter in our universe.

Until now, scientists have been conducting heavy-ion collision experiments to understand the properties of this quark-gluon plasma . Generally, these experiments are performed in extreme temperatures and high-energy conditions.

However, theoretical analysis of Taya and his team suggests that the plasma resulting from heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energy levels can give rise to the strongest electric and magnetic fields scientists have ever come across.

“This is crucially important to understand our origin since such extreme conditions are realized in the early universe, neutron stars and exploding stars called supernovae,” Hidetoshi Taya, first author of the study and a researcher at RIKEN, said .

Powerful and long-lasting electric fields

The study authors previously studied strong electromagnetic fields produced by powerful intense lasers . They examined whether these lasers could generate strong field effects.

“An intense laser is equivalent to roughly a hundred trillion LEDs but even these lasers are weak compared to the fields needed to produce these new strong-field physics effects,” Taya said.

During the current study, they realized that heavy-ion collisions also produced electromagnetic fields. What was even more surprising was that these fields were much stronger than what they observed with intense lasers.

So they performed an analysis to check whether the fields were strong enough to trigger strong field effects.

Our analysis “demonstrated that electric fields, which are strong and long-lived enough to explore strong-field physics—that cannot be approached with any other experiments—can be produced in heavy-ion collisions of intermediate energy,” Taya added.

The findings reveal the hidden potential of heavy-ion collisions, but further research is required to test this interesting theory.

The study is published in the journal Physical Review C .