Neutral and charged (pseduo)scalar mesons and diquarks under magnetic fields

TL;DR

This paper studies how (pseudo)scalar mesons and diquarks behave under magnetic fields using the NJL model, revealing effects like magnetic catalysis and consistency with lattice QCD results.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of meson and diquark masses under magnetic fields within the NJL model, incorporating quark-loop chains and Landau level effects.

Findings

Neutral pion mass remains nearly constant under magnetic field.

Scalar $\sigma$ meson mass increases with magnetic field due to magnetic catalysis.

Charged pion masses increase with magnetic field, consistent with lattice QCD.

Abstract

We investigate both (pseudo)scalar mesons and diquarks in the presence of external magnetic field in the framework of the two-flavored Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, where mesons and diquarks are constructed by infinite sum of quark-loop chains by using random phase approximation. The polarization function of the quark-loop is calculated to the leading order of $1/N_c$ expansion by taking the quark propagator in the Landau level representation. We systematically investigate the masses behaviors of scalar $\sigma$ meson, neutral and charged pions as well as the scalar diquarks, with respect to the magnetic field strength at finite temperature and chemical potential. It is shown that the numerical results of both neutral and charged pions are consistent with the lattice QCD simulations. The mass of the charge neutral pion keeps almost a constant under the magnetic field, which is preserved by the remnant symmetry of QCD$\times$QED in the vacuum. The mass of the charge neutral scalar $\sigma$ is around two times quark mass and increases with the magnetic field due to the magnetic catalysis effect, which is an typical example showing that the polarized internal quark structure cannot be neglected when we consider the meson properties under magnetic field. For the charged particles, the one quark-antiquark loop contribution to the charged $\pi^{\pm}$ increases essentially with the increase of magnetic fields due to the magnetic catalysis of the polarized quarks. However, the one quark-quark loop contribution to the scalar diquark mass is negative comparing with the point-particle result and the loop effect is small.