Related papers: QCD plasma instability and thermalisation at heavy…
We discuss results from 3+1-D numerical simulations of SU(2) Yang--Mills equations for an unstable Glasma expanding into the vacuum after a high energy heavy ion collision. We expand on our earlier work on a non-Abelian Weibel instability…
Because the initial shape of the QGP in a heavy ion collision is anisotropic, the momentum distribution becomes anisotropic after a short time. This leads to plasma instabilities, which may help explain how the plasma isotropizes. We…
The growth rate of the filamentation instability triggered when a diluted cold electron beam passes through a cold plasma is evaluated using the quantum hydrodynamic equations. Compared with a cold fluid model, quantum effects reduce both…
I review present challenges that QCD in extreme environments presents to lattice gauge theory. Recent data and impressions from RHIC are emphasized. Physical pictures of heavy ion wavefunctions, collisions and the generation of the Quark…
The stability of an expanding parton plasma is analyzed within quasi-particle models. The effective mass of the parton is calculated self-consistently from a gap equation which is either obtained from the Nambu Jona-Lasinio Lagrangian or…
The equilibrium thermodynamic properties of the SU(N) plasma at finite temperature are studied non-perturbatively in the large-N limit, via lattice simulations. We present high-precision numerical results for the pressure, trace of the…
When the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) - a system of deconfined quarks and gluons - is in a nonequilibrium state, it is usually unstable with respect to color collective modes. The instabilities, which are expected to strongly influence dynamics…
Thermalization of quark-gluon plasmas in heavy-ion collisions is a difficult theoretical problem. One theoretical goal has been to understand the physics of thermalization in the relatively simplifying limit of arbitrarily high energy…
We discuss the onset of the thermalization process in high-energy heavy-ion collisions from a weak coupling perspective, using classical-statistical real-time lattice simulations as a first principles tool to study the pre-equilibrium…
Plasma instabilities can play a fundamental role in quark-gluon plasma equilibration in the high energy (weak coupling) limit. Early simulations of the evolution of plasma instabilities in non-abelian gauge theory, performed in one spatial…
We present a first principles study of chiral plasma instabilities and the onset of chiral turbulence in QED plasmas far from equilibrium. By performing classical-statistical lattice simulations of the microscopic theory, we show that the…
Collisionless tearing instability with a power-law distribution function in a relativistic pair plasma with a guide field is studied. When the current sheet is supported by plasma pressure, the tearing mode is suppressed as the particle…
We describe how thermalization occurs in heavy ion collisions in the framework of perturbative QCD. When the saturation scale $Q_s$ is large compared to $\Lambda_{QCD}$, thermalization takes place during a time of order…
Non-Abelian plasma instabilities have been proposed as a possible explanation for fast isotropization of the quark-gluon plasma produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We study the real-time evolution of these instabilities in…
Collisions between nuclei at ultrarelativistic energies produce a color-deconfined plasma that expands explosively and rapidly reverts to the color-confined (hadronic) state. In non-central collisions, the zone of hot matter is transversely…
In 1959 Weibel demonstrated that when a QED plasma has a temperature anisotropy there exist unstable transverse magnetic excitations which grow exponentially fast. In this paper we will review how to determine the growth rates for these…
We compute nonequilibrium dynamics of plasma instabilities in classical-statistical lattice gauge theory in 3+1 dimensions. The simulations are done for the first time for the SU(3) gauge group relevant for quantum chromodynamics. We find a…
The generalization of the hard thermal loop effective theory to anisotropic plasmas is described with a detailed discussion of anisotropic dispersion laws and plasma instabilities. The numerical results obtained in real-time lattice…
Hydrodynamical modeling of heavy ion collisions at RHIC suggests that the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) "thermalizes" in a remarkably short time scale, about 0.6 fm/c. We argue that this should be viewed as indicating fast isotropization, but…
The collision of two expanding plasma clouds is investigated, emphasizing instabilities and electron energization in the plasma mixing layer. This work is directly relevant to laboratory experiments with explosively-created laser or z-pinch…