Lattice QCD with an inhomogeneous magnetic field background

Understand

The magnetic fields generated in non-central heavy-ion collisions are among the strongest fields produced in the Universe, reaching magnitudes comparable to the scale of the strong interactions.

• Backed by model simulations, the resulting field is expected to be spatially modulated, deviating significantly from the commonly considered uniform profile.
• To improve our understanding of the physics of quarks and gluons under such extreme conditions, we use lattice QCD simulations with $2+1$ staggered fermion flavors with physical quark masses and an inhomogeneous magnetic background for a range of temperatures covering the QCD phase transition.
• We assume a $1/\cosh^2$ function to model the field profile and vary its strength to analyze the impact on the computed observables and on the transition.