Possible observables for the chiral electric separation effect in Cu + Au collisions
The quark-gluon plasma (QGP) generated in relativistic heavy-ion collisions could be locally parity-odd. In parity-odd QGP, the electric field may induce a chiral current which is called the chiral electric separation effect (CESE). We propose two possible observables for CESE in Cu + Au collisions: The first one is the correlation zeta(alpha beta) = ; the second one is the charge-dependent event-plane angle Psi(q)(2) with q = +/- being charge. Nonzero Delta zeta = zeta(opp) - zeta(same) and Delta Psi = may signal the CESE in Cu + Au collisions. Within a multiphase transport model, we study how the final state interaction affects these observables. We find that the correlation gamma(alpha beta) = is sensitive to the out-of-plane charge separation caused by the chiral magnetic effect and to the in-plane charge separation caused by the in-plane electric field, but it is not sensitive to the CESE. On the other hand, Delta zeta and Delta Psi are sensitive to the CESE. Therefore, we suggest that future experiments measure the above observables in Cu + Au collisions in order to disentangle different chiral and charge separation mechanisms.