Can a strong magnetic background modify the nature of the chiral transition in QCD?

Abstract

The presence of a strong magnetic background can modify the nature and the dynamics of the chiral phase transition at finite temperature: for high enough magnetic fields, comparable to the ones expected to be created in noncentral high-energy heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC, the original crossover is turned into a first-order transition. We illustrate this effect within the linear sigma model with quarks to one loop in the $\mathrm{MS}$ scheme for $N_f=2$.

Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the Proceedings of Strong and Electroweak Matter 2008 (SEWM08), August 26-29, Amsterdam, The Netherlands