Particle yields in heavy ion collisions and the influence of strong magnetic fields

TL;DR

This study explores how extremely strong magnetic fields, much higher than those in magnetars, influence particle yields in heavy ion collisions, showing that fields around 10^{19} G improve data fitting.

Contribution

It models strange matter under intense magnetic fields and demonstrates that magnetic fields of about 10^{19} G enhance agreement with experimental data.

Findings

Magnetic fields of ~10^{19} G improve fit to STAR data.

Strong magnetic fields significantly affect particle energy levels.

Modeling includes solving Dirac, Rarita-Schwinger, Klein-Gordon, and Proca equations.

Abstract

It is expected that the magnetic field in the surface of magnetars do not exceed $10^{15}$ G. However, in heavy ion collisions, this value is expected to be much higher. We investigate the effects of a magnetic fields varying from $10^{18}$, to $10^{20}$ G in strange matter (composed of $u$, $d$ and $s$ quarks). We model matter as a free gas of baryons and mesons under the influence of an external magnetic field. We study the effects of such strong fields through a $\chi^2$ fit to some data sets of the STAR experiment. For this purpose we solve the Dirac, Rarita-Schwinger, Klein-Gordon and Proca equations subject to magnetic fields in order to obtain the energy expressions and the degeneracy for spin 1/2, spin 3/2, spin 0 and spin 1 particles, respectively. Our results show that a field of the order of $10^{19}$ G produces an improved fitting to the experimental data as compared to the calculations without magnetic field.