Baryon-Electric Charge Correlations and Chemical Potentials as Probes of Magnetized QCD

TL;DR

This study presents lattice QCD calculations of charge correlations under magnetic fields, revealing their potential as probes for magnetic fields in heavy ion collisions and highlighting the role of specific baryons like the $ ext{Delta}(1232)$.

Contribution

First lattice QCD results on conserved charge fluctuations in magnetic fields, identifying $ ext{B}Q$ correlations as magnetometers and analyzing their dependence on magnetic field strength.

Findings

$ ext{B}Q$ correlation increases rapidly with magnetic field at $T_{pc}$.

The $eB$ dependence is mainly due to the $ ext{Delta}(1232)$ baryon.

The ratio $Q/B$ varies with magnetic field and nuclear charge ratio.

Abstract

We present the first lattice QCD results of quadratic fluctuations and correlations of conserved charges in (2+1)-flavor lattice QCD in the presence of a background magnetic field. The simulations were performed using the Highly Improved Staggered Quarks with physical pion mass $m_\pi$ = 135 MeV on $N_\tau=8$ and 12 lattices. We find that the correlation between net baryon number and electric charge, denoted as $\chi^{\rm BQ}_{11} $, can serve as a magnetometer of QCD. At pseudocritical temperatures ($T_{pc}$) the $\chi^{\rm BQ}_{11}$ starts to increase rapidly with magnetic field strength $eB \gtrsim 2M^2_{\pi}$ and by a factor 2 at $eB\simeq 8 M^2_{\pi}$. By comparing with the hadron resonance gas model, we find that the $eB$ dependence of $\chi^{\rm BQ}_{11}$ is mainly due to the doubly charged $\Delta$(1232) baryon. Although the doubly charged $\Delta$(1232) could not be detected experimentally, its decay products, protons and pions, retain the $eB$ dependence of $\Delta$(1232)'s contribution to $\chi^{\rm BQ}_{11}$. Furthermore, the ratio of electric charge chemical potential to baryon chemical potential, $\mu_{\rm Q}/\mu_{\rm B}$, shows significant dependence on the magnetic field strength and varies with the ratio of electric charge to baryon number in the colliding nuclei in heavy ion collisions. These results provide baselines for effective theory and model studies, and both $\chi^{\rm BQ}_{11}$ and $\mu_{\rm Q}/\mu_{\rm B}$ could be useful probes for the detection of magnetic fields in relativistic heavy ion collision experiments as compared with corresponding results from the hadron resonance gas model.