QCD plasma instability and thermalisation at heavy ion collisions

Abstract

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 in heavy-ion collision experiments. We study the instability in SU(2) plasmas using the hard thermal loop effective lattice theory, which is suitable for studying real-time evolution of long wavelength modes in the plasma. We observe that under suitable conditions the plasma can indeed develop an instability which can grow to a very large magnitude, necessary for the rapid thermalisation in heavy-ion collisions.

Comments: 7 pages, contribution to Lattice 2007, Regensburg, Germany, 30 July - 4 August 2007