Turning up and down strong magnetic fields in relativistic nuclear collisions

TL;DR

This paper proposes using the average transverse momentum of emitted hadrons as a control parameter to study the magnetic field effects in relativistic nuclear collisions, revealing correlations with magnetic field-sensitive observables.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to control and analyze magnetic field effects in nuclear collisions via the average transverse momentum of emitted particles.

Findings

$ ext{<}p_t ext{>}$ correlates with magnetic field strength

Observable sensitivities are linked to $ ext{<}p_t ext{>}$ at fixed centrality

Provides a new approach to study magnetic field effects in collisions

Abstract

I show that the average transverse momentum, $\langle p_t \rangle$, of the hadrons emitted in relativistic nuclear collisions can be used as a ``knob'' to control the strength of the magnetic field induced by the spectator and the participant protons over the overlap region. I thus argue that any observable sensitive to this magnetic field is nontrivially correlated with $\langle p_t \rangle$ at a given collision centrality.