Magnetic effects on spontaneous symmetry breaking/restoration in a toroidal topology

Abstract

We study temperature and finite-size effects on the spontaneous symmetry breaking/restoration for a scalar field model under the influence of an external magnetic field, at finite chemical potential. We use the two-particle irreducible formalism and consider the large-N limit. We find that there is a minimal size of the system to sustain the broken phase, which diminishes as the applied field increases but is independent of the chemical potential. We analyze the critical curves and show that the magnetic field enhances the broken-phase regions, while increasing the chemical potential leads to a diminishment of the critical temperature.