Nonperturbative phenomena in QCD at finite temperature in a magnetic field

The norperturbative QCD vacuum at finite temperature in a external magnetic field is studied. Equations that relate nonperturbative QCD condensates at finite temperature to the thermodynamic pressure at T ≠ 0 and H ≠ 0 are obtained, and low-energy theorems are derived. The free energy of the QCD vacuum in the hadronic phase at H ≠ 0 is calculated, and expressions for the quark and gluon condensates are obtained. Various limiting cases for the behavior of the condensates at low and high temperatures and in weak and strong magnetic fields are investigated. A new interesting phenomenon that consists in the freezing of the quark condensate by a magnetic field is found. The character of spontaneous chiral-symmetry breaking in finite-temperature QCD in a magnetic field is studied. For this purpose, the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner formula relating the pion mass M _π and the axial-vector coupling constant F _π to the quark condensate is derived at T ≠ 0 and H ≠ 0. It is shown that this formula preserves its form at finite temperature after taking into account a magnetic field—that is, no additional terms independent of T and H appear. Thus, the scheme of soft chiral-symmetry breaking remains unchanged. The quark-hadron phase transition in QCD in a magnetic field is studied. It is shown that the phase-transition temperature becomes lower than that in the case of zero magnetic field.