Screening length of heavy quarkonia moving through a strongly coupled $$\mathcal {N}=4$$ super Yang–Mills plasma in a magnetic field

Abstract We investigate the influence of a constant magnetic field on the screening length of a heavy quarkonium propagating through a strongly coupled $$\mathcal {N}=4$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> super Yang–Mills plasma. Our analysis is conducted by evaluating the Wilson loop in a boosted magnetic brane background, with additional consideration of quarkonia axes aligned along different directions. We find that the presence of a magnetic field reduces the screening length, which in turn lowers the quarkonium binding energy. Moreover, the inclusion of a magnetic field enhances quarkonium dissociation, a result that is consistent with prior observations regarding the entropic force and imaginary potential.