Spin-related physics are hot topics in various research fields. Nucleons and quarks are both spin-half fermions. They are affected by the spin-orbit interaction as well as the magnetic field in non-central heavy-ion collisions, leading to interesting spin dynamics, especially the spin polarization perpendicular to the reaction plane. In relativistic heavy-ion collisions, the produced quarks can be approximately considered as massless particles due to the extremely high temperatures and high densities reached there, and the spin dynamics turns to the chiral dynamics in this case. Under the external electromagnetic field and vortical field, a series chiral anomaly effects may appear once there are asymmetries of electric charges and/or chirality charges. This manuscript reviews a series of studies on the spin and chiral dynamics based on transport simulations from our research group, including particle spin polarizations in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions and relativistic heavy-ion collisions, as well as chiral magnetic waves in an ideal system and in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Based on the deformed nucleon distributions obtained from the constrained Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov calculation using different nuclear symmetry energies, we have investigated the effects of the neutron skin and the collision geometry on the yield of free spectator nucleons as well as the yield ratio $N_{\rm{n}}^{}/N_{\rm{p}}^{}$ of free spectator neutrons to protons in collisions of deformed nuclei at RHIC energies. We found that tip-tip (body-body) collisions with prolate (oblate) nuclei lead to fewest free spectator nucleons, compared to other collision configurations. While the $N_{\rm{n}}^{}/N_{\rm{p}}^{}$ ratio is sensitive to the average neutron-skin thickness of colliding nuclei, and is thus a good probe of the symmetry energy, it is affected by the polar angular distribution of the neutron skin in different collision configurations. We also found that the collision geometry effect can be as large as 50% the symmetry energy effect in some collision systems. Due to the particular deformed neutron skin in ²³⁸U and ⁹⁶Zr, the symmetry energy effect on the $N_{\rm{n}}^{}/N_{\rm{p}}^{}$ ratio is enhanced in tip-tip ²³⁸U+²³⁸U collisions and body-body ⁹⁶Zr+⁹⁶Zr collisions compared to other collision configurations in the same collision system. Our study may shed light on probing deformed neutron skin by selecting desired configurations in high-energy collisions with deformed nuclei.