Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 28: Theorie

HK 28.6: Talk

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 12:30–12:45, 2F

Plasma instabilities in non-abelian gauge theories — Juergen Berges, •Sebastian Scheffler, and Denes Sexty — Institut fuer Kernphysik, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

We study the time evolution of SU(2)- gauge theory in the classical statistical approximation on the lattice. This is essential for understanding the formation of an equilibrated quark-gluon plasma whose properties are studied in experiments at RHIC and in the future also at LHC and FAIR.

Using anisotropic initial conditions we investigate the role of plasma instabilities in the isotropization process. We find that instabilities affect the isotropization of low-momentum degrees of freedom. Establishing contact to experiments, we obtain growth rates of order 1 c/fm. This means that the instabilities are probably too slow to explain the experimental findings at RHIC which suggest rapid isotropization within 0.6 fm/c. We discuss implications for experiments and discuss possible extensions of our approach.