Chris Muscatello with Tanmay Vachaspati

Propagation of Charged Particles with Spin in Helical Magnetic Fields

The study of cosmic rays and their origin has both cosmological and astrophysical implications. Some previous works dealt with the propagation of charged particles through large-scale randomly distributed astrophysical magnetic fields. Magnetic fields are known to exist in all astrophysical systems and are theorized to exist in the early universe. More specifically, helical magnetic fields exist in a number of astrophysical systems such as jets emanating from galactic centers and possibly the early universe. The current interest is to study the propagation of charged particles with spin in helical magnetic fields and to determine if the results can be used as a probe of magnetic helicity.