QCD plasma instability and thermalisation at heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how plasma instabilities in non-equilibrium QCD can lead to rapid thermalisation in heavy-ion collisions, using lattice simulations of SU(2) plasmas.

Contribution

It demonstrates the development of significant plasma instabilities in SU(2) using the hard thermal loop lattice theory, relevant for understanding thermalisation.

Findings

Plasma can develop large-scale instabilities

Instabilities grow exponentially under certain conditions

Implications for rapid thermalisation in 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.