Polyakov loop and heavy quark entropy in strong magnetic fields from holographic black hole engineering

TL;DR

This paper uses a holographic Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton model to study how the Polyakov loop and heavy quark entropy depend on temperature and magnetic field in the quark-gluon plasma, matching lattice data and making testable predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a bottom-up holographic model that accurately reproduces lattice QCD results for the QGP under magnetic fields and provides new predictions for heavy quark entropy behavior.

Findings

Good agreement with lattice data for temperatures above 150 MeV

Model accurately captures magnetic field effects on Polyakov loop

Predicts heavy quark entropy behavior at nonzero magnetic fields

Abstract

We investigate the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the Polyakov loop and heavy quark entropy in a bottom-up Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMD) holographic model for the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that quantitatively matches lattice data for the $(2+1)$-flavor QCD equation of state at finite magnetic field and physical quark masses. We compare the holographic EMD model results for the Polyakov loop at zero and nonzero magnetic fields and the heavy quark entropy at vanishing magnetic field with the latest lattice data available for these observables and find good agreement for temperatures $T\gtrsim 150$ MeV and magnetic fields $eB\lesssim 1$ GeV$^2$. Predictions for the behavior of the heavy quark entropy at nonzero magnetic fields are made that could be readily tested on the lattice.