Magnetic catalysis (and inverse catalysis) at finite temperature in two-color lattice QCD

Abstract

Two-color lattice QCD with N_f=4 staggered fermion degrees of freedom (no rooting trick is applied) with equal electric charge q is studied in a homogeneous magnetic background field B and at non-zero temperature T. In order to circumvent renormalization as a function of the bare coupling we apply a fixed-scale approach. We study the influence of the magnetic field on the critical temperature. At rather small pseudo-scalar meson mass ($m_π \approx 175 \mathrm{MeV} \approx T_c(B=0)$) we confirm a monotonic rise of the quark condensate $<\barψ ψ>$ with increasing magnetic field strength, i.e. magnetic catalysis, as long as one is staying within the confinement or deconfinement phase. In the transition region we find indications for a non-monotonic behavior of $T_c(B)$ at low magnetic field strength ($qB<0.8 \mathrm{GeV}^2$) and a clear rise at stronger magnetic field. The conjectured existence of a minimum value $T_c(B^{*}) < T_c(B=0)$ would leave a temperature window for a decrease of $<\barψ ψ>$ with rising $B$ (inverse magnetic catalysis) also in the present model.

10 pages, 7 figures; revised version accepted by Phys. Rev. D