CP violation and chiral symmetry restoration in the hot linear sigma model in a strong magnetic background Original Research Article

We study the effects of CP violation on the nature of the chiral transition within the linear sigma model with two flavors of quarks. The finite-temperature effective potential containing contributions from nontrivial values for the parameter θ is computed to one loop order and their minima structure is analyzed. Motivated by the possibility of observing the formation of CP-odd domains in high-energy heavy ion collisions, we also investigate the behavior of the effective potential in the presence of a strong magnetic background. We find that the nature of the chiral transition is influenced by both θ and the magnetic field.