We study the motion of vortex filaments in chiral media and find a semiclassical analog of the anomaly-induced chiral magnetic effect. The helical solitonic excitations on vortices in a parity-breaking medium are found to carry additional energy flow along the vortex in the direction dictated by the sign of chirality imbalance; we call this new transport phenomenon the chiral propulsion effect. The dynamics of vortex filaments in the parity-breaking background is described by a modified version of the localized induction equation. We analyze the linear stability of simple vortex solutions and study the effects of chiral media on the excitation spectrum and the growth rate of the unstable modes. We also show that, if the equation of motion of the filament is symmetric under the simultaneous reversal of parity and time, planar-shape solutions cannot transport energy.

• Received 29 January 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.142301

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Published by the American Physical Society