Compressibility and speed of sound in magnetized nuclear matter with broken scale invariance

Abstract

The thermodynamical properties of magnetized nuclear matter at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential are studied within an effective model incorporating the QCD trace anomaly effect. The presence of magnetic field induces anisotropic structure in the energy momentum tensor due to the broken rotational invariance. The study exhibits a phase transition through the sudden change of the effective nucleon mass in a certain range of baryon chemical potential and temperature. The addition of nucleonic vacuum contribution at finite magnetic field leads to the magnetic catalysis effect. The change in squared speed of sound with chemical potential at various temperatures is closely connected to the nature of phase transition in nuclear matter. The pressure anisotropy results in different values of sound speed and isothermal compressibility in the parallel and perpendicular directions with respect to the magnetic field. The smaller values of isothermal compressibility in the parallel direction compared to the perpendicular one indicate that the equation of state is stiffer along the magnetic field direction. The studies of these thermodynamic observables can have significant importance in analyzing the properties of some compact astrophysical objects as well as in the context of non-central heavy ion collision experiments.