Influence of finite volume and magnetic field effects on the QCD phase diagram.

The 2 + 1 SU(3) Polyakov linear sigma model is used to investigate the respective influence of a finite volume and a magnetic field on the quark-hadron phase boundary in the plane of baryon chemical potential () versus temperature (T) of the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram. The calculated results indicate sizable shifts of the quark-hadron phase boundary to lower values of for increasing magnetic field strength, and an opposite shift to higher values of for decreasing system volume. Such shifts could have important implications for the extraction of the thermodynamic properties of the QCD phase diagram from heavy ion data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]