Anomalous Transport Processes in Anisotropically Expanding Quark-Gluon Plasmas

Abstract

We derive an expression for the anomalous viscosity in an anisotropically expanding quark-gluon-plasma, which arises from interactions of thermal partons with dynamically generated color fields. The anomalous viscosity dominates over the collisional viscosity for large velocity gradients or weak coupling. This effect may provide an explanation for the apparent ``nearly perfect'' liquidity of the matter produced in nuclear collisions at RHIC without the assumption that it is a strongly coupled state.

Comments: 31 pages, 1 figure, some typos in published version are corrected