Magnetic catalysis in nuclear matter

Abstract

A strong magnetic field enhances the chiral condensate at low temperatures. This so-called magnetic catalysis thus seeks to increase the vacuum mass of nucleons. We employ two relativistic field-theoretical models for nuclear matter, the Walecka model and an extended linear sigma model, to discuss the resulting effect on the transition between vacuum and nuclear matter at zero temperature. In both models we find that the creation of nuclear matter in a sufficiently strong magnetic field becomes energetically more costly due to the heaviness of magnetized nucleons, even though it is also found that nuclear matter is more strongly bound in a magnetic field. Our results are potentially important for dense nuclear matter in compact stars, especially since previous studies in the astrophysical context have always ignored the contribution of the magnetized Dirac sea and thus the effect of magnetic catalysis.

19 pages, 5 figures, v3: version to appear in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (9)

• QCD Phase Transition in a Strong Magnetic Background
• Quark matter under strong magnetic fields in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio Model
• Inverse magnetic catalysis in dense holographic matter
• Chiral Properties of Strong Interactions in a Magnetic Background
• The chiral condensate in a constant electromagnetic field
• Cold, dense nuclear matter in a SU(2) parity doublet model
• Magnetic properties of dense holographic QCD
• The chiral transition in a magnetic background: Finite density effects and the functional renormalization group
• Meson supercurrents and the Meissner effect in the Sakai-Sugimoto model

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Heavy meson spectroscopy under strong magnetic field
• Inverse magnetic catalysis and regularization in the quark-meson model
• Nucleating quark droplets in the core of magnetars
• Finite-volume and magnetic effects on the phase structure of the three-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model
• Critical behaviour of an effective relativistic mean field model in the presence of magnetic background and boundaries
• Vacuum effects on the properties of nuclear matter under an external magnetic field
• Hot magnetized nuclear matter: Thermodynamic and Saturation Properties