Connection between string chaos and deconfinement

Determine whether the suppression and anisotropy of heavy-quark string chaos in the Einstein–Maxwell–dilaton holographic QCD model are directly tied to the onset of deconfinement and reproduce the magnetic-field dependence of the QCD transition.

Background

The paper studies a suspended heavy-quark string in a QCD-like Einstein–Maxwell–dilaton background. In the string frame, increasing the magnetic field or chemical potential suppresses the instability exponent, while a transverse string is less chaotic than a longitudinal one.

The notes compare this behavior with inverse magnetic catalysis, where the QCD deconfinement temperature decreases as the magnetic field increases. Because the holographic string result would suggest the opposite trend if string chaos directly tracked deconfinement, the proposed connection is explicitly left unresolved and may fail at either the string-chaos or thermodynamic end.

References

If chaos in the confining string is tied to the onset of deconfinement, then two parameters that both suppress it in the string frame point toward deconfinement being harder to reach at larger field, an inference the Einstein-frame signs would run backwards. The lattice finds the opposite for the magnetic field: inverse magnetic catalysis is the observation that the transition temperature falls as B grows, so deconfinement gets easier rather than harder. Ref. raises the connection without claiming agreement, and that is the right level of confidence, since the link between string chaos and the transition is itself a conjecture and either end of it could be what fails. The orientation dependence is on firmer ground: the transverse direction softening faster than the longitudinal one parallels the anisotropy the lattice finds in confining properties at nonzero magnetic field. Neither connection is established here.

— Classical and Quantum Chaos from Foundations to Holography  (2608.19131 - Shukla, 19 Aug 2026) in Section 6, subsection “Magnetic field, chemical potential and the anisotropy of chaos” (label sec:L6_aniso)