Influence of finite volume and magnetic field effects on the QCD phase diagram

The 2 + 1 SU(3) Polyakov linear sigma model is used to investigate the respective influence of a finite volume and a magnetic field on the quark-hadron phase boundary in the plane of baryon chemical potential (${\mu }_B$) versus temperature (T) of the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram. The calculated results indicate sizable shifts of the quark-hadron phase boundary to lower values of $\left({\mu }_{B}andT\right)$ for increasing magnetic field strength, and an opposite shift to higher values of $\left({\mu }_{B}andT\right)$ for decreasing system volume. Such shifts could have important implications for the extraction of the thermodynamic properties of the QCD phase diagram from heavy ion data. (paper)