Vacuum effects on the properties of nuclear matter under an external magnetic field

Abstract

The effects of the Dirac sea of nucleons are investigated within a covariant model of the hadronic interaction. I extend the usual mean field approximation and present a procedure to deal with divergences which are proportional to polynomials on the magnetic field intensity. For this purpose a nucleon propagator is used which takes account of the full effect of the magnetic field as well as the presence of the anomalous magnetic moments of both protons and neutrons. I examine single-particle properties and bulk thermodynamical quantities and conclude that within a reasonable range of densities and magnetic intensities the effects found are moderate.