Quark-gluon plasma in an external magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper uses lattice QCD simulations to explore how an external magnetic field influences the quark-gluon plasma's equation of state, employing a novel Taylor expansion method to compute the effects.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach for calculating magnetic field effects on quark-gluon plasma using Taylor expansion in lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

First application of Taylor expansion for magnetic effects in QCD

Computed expansion coefficients to second order in magnetic field

Avoided boundary condition complications in simulations

Abstract

Using numerical simulations of lattice QCD we calculate the effect of an external magnetic field on the equation of state of the quark-gluon plasma. The results are obtained using a Taylor expansion of the pressure with respect to the magnetic field for the first time. The coefficients of the expansion are computed to second order in the magnetic field. Our setup for the external magnetic field avoids complications arising from toroidal boundary conditions, making a Taylor series expansion straightforward. This study is exploratory and is meant to serve as a proof of principle.