English

Leading-Order QCD Equation of State in Strong Magnetic Fields at Nonzero Baryon Chemical Potential

High Energy Physics - Lattice 2025-08-12 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We present continuum-estimated (2+1)(2+1)-flavor lattice QCD results for the leading-order Taylor expansion coefficients of the equation of state in strong magnetic fields and at nonzero baryon chemical potential. Simulations employ the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action with physical pion masses on lattices of temporal extent Nτ=8,12N_\tau = 8,\,12, covering 145T165 MeV145 \lesssim T \lesssim 165~\mathrm{MeV} and eB0.8 GeV2eB \lesssim 0.8~\mathrm{GeV}^2, imposing strangeness neutrality with baseline results at electric charge to baryon number ratio r=0.4r = 0.4. We determine the TT--eBeB dependence of q1q_1 and s1s_1 (electric charge and strangeness chemical potential ratios), pressure coefficient P2P_2, baryon number density coefficient N1BN_1^{\rm B}, and energy-like coefficients Θ2\Theta_2 (trace anomaly), ϵ2\epsilon_2 (energy density), and σ2\sigma_2 (entropy density). Magnetic fields induce temperature-band crossings for q1q_1 and P2P_2 and non-monotonic structures in the energy-like coefficients, with Θ2\Theta_2 at strong fields possibly vanishing or turning negative at higher TT, indicating dominance of the pressure term over the energy contribution. We also examine the rr-dependence, finding that r=0r=0 (charge-neutral matter) shows the most muted magnetic-field enhancement of P2P_2 despite larger q1|q_1|, providing a useful reference for neutron-star-like conditions. Comparisons with the hadron resonance gas (HRG) model show qualitative agreement at low TT and weak eBeB, with clear deviations near the crossover and at strong fields. These results provide useful input for constraining models and effective theories of QCD matter in strong magnetic fields at finite baryon density.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.07532,
  title  = {Leading-Order QCD Equation of State in Strong Magnetic Fields at Nonzero Baryon Chemical Potential},
  author = {Heng-Tong Ding and Jin-Biao Gu and Arpith Kumar and Sheng-Tai Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.07532},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

29 pages, 10 figures, 5 tables