Phase Boundary of Nuclear Matter in Magnetic Field

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Amari, Yuki, Nitta, Muneto, Qiu, Zebin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Amari, Yuki
Nitta, Muneto
Qiu, Zebin
author_facet Amari, Yuki
Nitta, Muneto
Qiu, Zebin
contents Nuclear matter with a strong magnetic field is prevalent inside neutron stars and heavy-ion collisions. In a sufficiently large magnetic field the ground state is either a chiral soliton lattice (CSL), an array of solitons of the neutral pion field, or a domain-wall Skyrmion phase in which Skyrmions emerge inside the chiral solitons. In the region of large chemical potential and a magnetic field lower than its critical value for CSL, a Skyrmion crystal is expected to take up the ground state based on the chiral perturbation theory at the next leading order. We determine the phase boundary between such a Skyrmion crystal and the QCD vacuum. There was a conjecture that a magnetic field deforms the Skyrmion into a pancake shape whose boundary is a superconducting ring of charged pions. In contrast, through the exact Skyrmion solution, we find that the pancake conjecture holds approximately in a strong magnetic field, but fails for a weak one. We also validate that a Skyrmion would shrink to null without the Skyrme term, although Derrick's scaling law is modified by a background magnetic field, and the stability at the leading order is not ruled out in theory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_08379
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Phase Boundary of Nuclear Matter in Magnetic Field
Amari, Yuki
Nitta, Muneto
Qiu, Zebin
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Nuclear Theory
Nuclear matter with a strong magnetic field is prevalent inside neutron stars and heavy-ion collisions. In a sufficiently large magnetic field the ground state is either a chiral soliton lattice (CSL), an array of solitons of the neutral pion field, or a domain-wall Skyrmion phase in which Skyrmions emerge inside the chiral solitons. In the region of large chemical potential and a magnetic field lower than its critical value for CSL, a Skyrmion crystal is expected to take up the ground state based on the chiral perturbation theory at the next leading order. We determine the phase boundary between such a Skyrmion crystal and the QCD vacuum. There was a conjecture that a magnetic field deforms the Skyrmion into a pancake shape whose boundary is a superconducting ring of charged pions. In contrast, through the exact Skyrmion solution, we find that the pancake conjecture holds approximately in a strong magnetic field, but fails for a weak one. We also validate that a Skyrmion would shrink to null without the Skyrme term, although Derrick's scaling law is modified by a background magnetic field, and the stability at the leading order is not ruled out in theory.
title Phase Boundary of Nuclear Matter in Magnetic Field
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Nuclear Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08379