Hadronic Paschen-Back effect

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel hadronic Paschen-Back effect caused by strong magnetic fields, leading to wave function deformation and potential experimental signatures in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It reveals a new hadronic phenomenon analogous to atomic Paschen-Back effect, demonstrating wave function deformation and anisotropic decay in strong magnetic fields.

Findings

Deformation of hadronic wave functions in strong magnetic fields.

Mass spectra and mixing rates of charmonia with orbital angular momentum.

Proposal of anisotropic decay as a measurable signature.

Abstract

We find a novel phenomenon induced by the interplay between a strong magnetic field and finite orbital angular momenta in hadronic systems, which is analogous to the Paschen-Back effect observed in the field of atomic physics. This effect allows the wave functions to drastically deform. We discuss anisotropic decay from the deformation as a possibility to measure the strength of the magnetic field in heavy-ion collision at LHC, RHIC and SPS, which has not experimentally been measured. As an example we investigate charmonia with a finite orbital angular momentum in a strong magnetic field. We calculate the mass spectra and mixing rates. To obtain anisotropic wave functions, we apply the cylindrical Gaussian expansion method, where the Gaussian bases to expand the wave functions have different widths along transverse and longitudinal directions in the cylindrical coordinate.