Chiral kinetic theory in curved spacetime

Abstract

Many-body systems with chiral fermions exhibit anomalous transport phenomena originated from quantum anomalies. Based on quantum field theory, we derive the kinetic theory for chiral fermions interacting with an external electromagnetic field in a background curved geometry. The resultant framework is U(1) gauge invariant and local Lorentz and diffeomorphism covariant. It is particularly useful to study the gravitational or noninertial effects for chiral fermions. As the first application, we study the chiral dynamics in a rotating coordinate and clarify the roles of the Coriolis force and spin-vorticity coupling in generating the chiral vortical effect. We also show that the chiral vortical effect is an intrinsic phenomenon of a rotating chiral fluid, and thus independent of the observer's frame.