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Published on: November 11, 2013
Quantum magnetic collapse
1High Energy Division, Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland and Helsinki Institute of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland.
Abstract:
We study the thermodynamics of degenerate electron and charged vector boson gases in very intense magnetic fields. In degenerate conditions of the electron gas, the pressure transverse to the magnetic field B may vanish, leading to a transverse collapse. For W bosons an instability arises because the magnetization diverges at the critical field B(c) = M(2)(W)/e. If the magnetic field is self-consistently maintained, the maximum value it can take is of the order of 2B(c)/3, but in any case the system becomes unstable and collapses.
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