Effects of magnetic fields on the quark-gluon plasma

In this talk, the response of the thermal QCD medium to external (electro)magnetic fields is studied using continuum extrapolated lattice results at physical quark masses. The magnetic susceptibility of QCD is calculated, revealing a strong paramagnetic response at high temperatures. This paramagnetism is shown to result in an anisotropic squeezing of the quark-gluon plasma in non-central heavy-ion collisions, implying a sizeable contribution to the elliptic flow. Another aspect is the magnetic response of topologically non-trivial domains to the magnetic field. We quantify this effect on the lattice and compare the results to a simple model estimate.