Neutron in a Strong Magnetic Field: Finite Volume Effects

Abstract

We investigate the neutron's response to magnetic fields on a torus with the aid of chiral perturbation theory, and expose effects from non-vanishing holonomies. The determination of such effects necessitates non-perturbative treatment of the magnetic field; and, to this end, a strong-field power counting is employed. Using a novel coordinate-space method, we find the neutron propagates in a coordinate-dependent effective potential that we obtain by integrating out charged pions winding around the torus. Knowledge of these finite volume effects will aid in the extraction of neutron properties from lattice QCD computations in external magnetic fields. In particular, we obtain finite volume corrections to the neutron magnetic moment and magnetic polarizability. These quantities have not been computed correctly in the literature. In addition to effects from non-vanishing holonomies, finite volume corrections depend on the magnetic flux quantum through an Aharonov-Bohm effect. We make a number of observations that demonstrate the importance of non-perturbative effects from strong magnetic fields currently employed in lattice QCD calculations. These observations concern neutron physics in both finite and infinite volume.