The Role of Color-Magnetic Monopoles in a Gluonic Plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how color-magnetic monopoles affect the properties of a high-temperature gluonic plasma, revealing their significant role in transport phenomena despite minimal impact on thermodynamics.

Contribution

It introduces the concept that magnetic monopoles, though rare and heavy, dominate transport cross sections in a gluonic plasma at high temperatures.

Findings

Monopoles have a negligible effect on thermodynamic quantities.

Gluon-monopole scattering greatly enhances transport cross sections.

This mechanism supports the applicability of hydrodynamics at LHC energies.

Abstract

The role of color-magnetic monopoles in a pure gauge plasma at high temperature $T>2T_c$ is considered. In this temperature regime, monopoles can be considered heavy, rare objects embedded into matter consisting mostly of the usual "electric" quasiparticles, quarks and gluons. The gluon-monopole scattering is found to hardly influence thermodynamic quantities, yet it produces a large transport cross section, significantly exceeding that for pQCD gluon-gluon scattering up to quite high $T$. This mechanism keeps viscosity small enough for hydrodynamics to work at LHC.