Deconfinement in the presence of strong magnetic field

We study the impact of a finite magnetic field on the deconfinement phase transition for heavy quarks by computing the fluctuations of the Polyakov loops. It is demonstrated that the explicit Z(3) breaking field increases with the magnetic field, leading to a decrease in the (pseudo) critical temperatures and a shrinking first-order region in the phase diagram. Phenomenological equations which capture the behaviors of the Z(3) breaking field at strong and weak magnetic fields for massive and massless quarks are given. Lastly, we explore the case of dynamical light quarks, and demonstrate how an improved constituent quark mass function can enforce the correct magnetic field dependence of the deconfinement temperature in an effective model, as observed in Lattice QCD calculations.