Non-Abelian plasma instabilities: SU(3) vs. SU(2)

TL;DR

This paper presents 3+1D simulations of non-Abelian plasma instabilities for SU(3), SU(4), and SU(5), revealing that SU(2) simulations effectively replicate higher-rank group dynamics with similar spectra and turbulence characteristics.

Contribution

First 3+1D simulations of non-Abelian plasma instabilities for multiple gauge groups, showing SU(2) captures essential dynamics of higher groups with comparable spectra.

Findings

SU(2) simulations reproduce SU(3), SU(4), SU(5) dynamics

Similar turbulent spectra across different gauge groups

Linear energy growth increases with the number of colors

Abstract

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 plasma with stationary momentum-space anisotropy is studied using a hard-loop effective theory that is discretized in the velocities of hard particles. We find that the numerically less expensive calculations using the group SU(2) essentially reproduce the nonperturbative dynamics of non-Abelian plasma instabilities with higher rank gauge groups provided the mass parameters of the corresponding hard-loop effective theories are the same. In particular we find very similar spectra for the turbulent cascade that forms in the strong-field regime, which is associated with an approximately linear growth of energy in collective fields. The magnitude of the linear growth however turns out to increase with the number of colors.