Related papers: Hard-Loop Dynamics of Non-Abelian Plasma Instabili…
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…
Non-Abelian plasma instabilities play a crucial role in the nonequilibrium dynamics of a weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma and they importantly modify the standard perturbative bottom-up thermalization scenario in heavy-ion collisions.…
We present the first 3+1 dimensional simulations of non-Abelian plasma instabilities in gauge-covariant Boltzmann-Vlasov equations for the QCD gauge group SU(3) as well as for SU(4) and SU(5). The real-time evolution of instabilities for a…
I discuss recent advances in the understanding of non-equilibrium gauge field dynamics in plasmas which have particle distributions which are locally anisotropic in momentum space. In contrast to locally isotropic plasmas such anisotropic…
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…
QCD plasma instabilities appear to play an important role in the equilibration of quark-gluon plasmas in heavy-ion collisions in the theoretical limit of weak coupling (i.e. asymptotically high energy). It is important to understand what…
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…
Plasma instabilities are parametrically the dominant nonequilibrium dynamics of a weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma. In recent years the time evolution of the corresponding collective colour fields has been studied in stationary anisotropic…
Penetrating probes in heavy-ion collisions, like jets and photons, are sensitive to the transport coefficients of the produced quark-gluon plasma, such as shear and bulk viscosity. Quantifying this sensitivity requires a detailed…
We study the (3+1)-dimensional evolution of non-Abelian plasma instabilities in the presence of a longitudinally expanding background of hard particles using the discretized hard loop framework. The free streaming background dynamically…
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…
In this work we study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a quark-gluon plasma, as created in heavy-ion collisions. We investigate how big of a role plasma instabilities can play in the isotropization and equilibration of a quark-gluon plasma.…
I discuss recent advances in the understanding of non-equilibrium gauge field dynamics in plasmas which have particle distributions which are locally anisotropic in momentum space. In contrast to locally isotropic plasmas such anisotropic…
The quark gluon plasma as produced in heavy ion collisions is exposed to early anisotropies in momentum space due to its rapid expansion. Such anisotropies can lead to non-abelian plasma instabilities, driven by unstable gluonic modes that…
We study the role of QCD plasma instabilities in non-equilibrium quark-gluon plasmas. First, we argue that such instabilities must drastically modify the "bottom-up" thermalization scenario for heavy-ion collisions. Second, we discuss…
Under suitable non-equilibrium conditions QCD plasma can develop plasma instabilities, where some modes of the plasma grow exponentially. It has been argued that these instabilities can play a significant role in the thermalisation of the…
Plasma instabilities can play a fundamental role in plasma equilibration. There are similarities and differences between plasma instabilities in abelian and non-abelian gauge theories. In particular, it has been an open question whether…
Non-Abelian plasma instabilities play an important role in the non-equilibrium dynamics of a weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma. Using the discretized hard loop framework we calculate the time evolution of soft gluonic fields in a…
We numerically investigate gauge field instabilities in anisotropic SU(2) plasmas using weak field initial conditions. The growth of unstable modes is stopped by non-abelian effects for moderate anisotropy. If we increase the anisotropy the…
Magnetic plasma instabilities appear to play an important role in the early stages of quark-gluon plasma equilibration in the high energy (weak coupling) limit. Numerical studies of the growth of such instabilities from small seed…