Ohm's law in a chiral plasma

The motion of plasma electrons in a stochastic electromagnetic field is studied in the low-conductivity limit. It is shown that under very general conditions, in the presence of a nonzero average chirality of the small-scale electromagnetic field, the effective current depends on the curl of the applied electric field, j=sigma E+sigma(kappa) E, just as for similar dependences for the electric displacement and magnetic induction vectors in optically active and artificial chiral media. Under certain conditions such an Ohm's law leads to growth of the magnetic field, the structure of the growth being dependent on the conductivity of the medium. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021- 3640(99)00816-6].