27,489 research outputs found
Non-abelian plasma instabilities for strong anisotropy
We numerically investigate gauge field instabilities in anisotropic SU(2)
plasmas using weak field initial conditions. The growth of unstable modes is
stopped by non-abelian effects for moderate anisotropy. If we increase the
anisotropy the growth continues beyond the non-abelian saturation bound. We
find strong indications that the continued growth is not due to over-saturation
of infrared field modes, but instead due to very rapid growth of high momentum
modes which are not unstable in the weak field limit. The saturation amplitude
strongly depends on the initial conditions. For strong initial fields we do not
observe the sustained growth.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figure
High temperature color conductivity at next-to-leading log order
The non-Abelian analog of electrical conductivity at high temperature has
previously been known only at leading logarithmic order: that is, neglecting
effects suppressed only by an inverse logarithm of the gauge coupling. We
calculate the first sub-leading correction. This has immediate application to
improving, to next-to-leading log order, both effective theories of
non-perturbative color dynamics, and calculations of the hot electroweak baryon
number violation rate.Comment: 47 pages, 6+2 figure
Real-time Chern-Simons term for hypermagnetic fields
If non-vanishing chemical potentials are assigned to chiral fermions, then a
Chern-Simons term is induced for the corresponding gauge fields. In thermal
equilibrium anomalous processes adjust the chemical potentials such that the
coefficient of the Chern-Simons term vanishes, but it has been argued that
there are non-equilibrium epochs in cosmology where this is not the case and
that, consequently, certain fermionic number densities and large-scale
(hypermagnetic) field strengths get coupled to each other. We generalise the
Chern-Simons term to a real-time situation relevant for dynamical
considerations, by deriving the anomalous Hard Thermal Loop effective action
for the hypermagnetic fields, write down the corresponding equations of motion,
and discuss some exponentially growing solutions thereof.Comment: 13 page
Effective Kinetic Theory for High Temperature Gauge Theories
Quasiparticle dynamics in relativistic plasmas associated with hot,
weakly-coupled gauge theories (such as QCD at asymptotically high temperature
) can be described by an effective kinetic theory, valid on sufficiently
large time and distance scales. The appropriate Boltzmann equations depend on
effective scattering rates for various types of collisions that can occur in
the plasma. The resulting effective kinetic theory may be used to evaluate
observables which are dominantly sensitive to the dynamics of typical
ultrarelativistic excitations. This includes transport coefficients
(viscosities and diffusion constants) and energy loss rates. We show how to
formulate effective Boltzmann equations which will be adequate to compute such
observables to leading order in the running coupling of high-temperature
gauge theories [and all orders in ]. As previously proposed
in the literature, a leading-order treatment requires including both
particle scattering processes as well as effective ``'' collinear
splitting processes in the Boltzmann equations. The latter account for nearly
collinear bremsstrahlung and pair production/annihilation processes which take
place in the presence of fluctuations in the background gauge field. Our
effective kinetic theory is applicable not only to near-equilibrium systems
(relevant for the calculation of transport coefficients), but also to highly
non-equilibrium situations, provided some simple conditions on distribution
functions are satisfied.Comment: 40 pages, new subsection on soft gauge field instabilities adde
Generalized Boltzmann equations for on-shell particle production in a hot plasma
A novel refinement of the conventional treatment of Kadanoff--Baym equations
is suggested. Besides the Boltzmann equation another differential equation is
used for calculating the evolution of the non-equilibrium two-point function.
Although it was usually interpreted as a constraint on the solution of the
Boltzmann equation, we argue that its dynamics is relevant to the determination
and resummation of the particle production cut contributions. The differential
equation for this new contribution is illustrated in the example of the cubic
scalar model. The analogue of the relaxation time approximation is suggested.
It results in the shift of the threshold location and in smearing out of the
non-analytic threshold behaviour of the spectral function. Possible
consequences for the dilepton production are discussed.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 2 ps figure
Transport Coefficients of Gluon Plasma
Transport coefficients of gluon plasma are calculated for a SU(3) pure gauge
model by lattice QCD simulations on and
lattices. Simulations are carried out at a slightly above the deconfinement
transition temperature , where a new state of matter is currently being
pursued in RHIC experiments. Our results show that the ratio of the shear
viscosity to the entropy is less than one and the bulk viscosity is consistent
with zero in the region, .Comment: 10 pages, Late
Selective decay by Casimir dissipation in fluids
The problem of parameterizing the interactions of larger scales and smaller
scales in fluid flows is addressed by considering a property of two-dimensional
incompressible turbulence. The property we consider is selective decay, in
which a Casimir of the ideal formulation (enstrophy in 2D flows, helicity in 3D
flows) decays in time, while the energy stays essentially constant. This paper
introduces a mechanism that produces selective decay by enforcing Casimir
dissipation in fluid dynamics. This mechanism turns out to be related in
certain cases to the numerical method of anticipated vorticity discussed in
\cite{SaBa1981,SaBa1985}. Several examples are given and a general theory of
selective decay is developed that uses the Lie-Poisson structure of the ideal
theory. A scale-selection operator allows the resulting modifications of the
fluid motion equations to be interpreted in several examples as parameterizing
the nonlinear, dynamical interactions between disparate scales. The type of
modified fluid equation systems derived here may be useful in modelling
turbulent geophysical flows where it is computationally prohibitive to rely on
the slower, indirect effects of a realistic viscosity, such as in large-scale,
coherent, oceanic flows interacting with much smaller eddies
Perturbative and Nonperturbative Kolmogorov Turbulence in a Gluon Plasma
In numerical simulations of nonabelian plasma instabilities in the hard-loop
approximation, a turbulent spectrum has been observed that is characterized by
a phase-space density of particles with exponent , which is larger than expected from relativistic
scatterings. Using the approach of Zakharov, L'vov and Falkovich, we analyse
possible Kolmogorov coefficients for relativistic -particle
processes, which give at most perturbatively for an energy cascade.
We discuss nonperturbative scenarios which lead to larger values. As an extreme
limit we find the result generically in an inherently nonperturbative
effective field theory situation, which coincides with results obtained by
Berges et al.\ in large- scalar field theory. If we instead assume that
scaling behavior is determined by Schwinger-Dyson resummations such that the
different scaling of bare and dressed vertices matters, we find that
intermediate values are possible. We present one simple scenario which would
single out .Comment: published versio
Pressure of Hot QCD at Large N_f
We compute the pressure and entropy of hot QCD in the limit of large number
of fermions, N_f >> N_c ~ 1, to next to leading order in N_f. At this order the
calculation can be done exactly, up to ambiguities due to the presence of a
Landau pole in the theory; the ambiguities are O(T^8/\Lambda^4_{Landau}) and
remain negligible long after the perturbative series (in g^2 N_f) has broken
down. Our results can be used to test several proposed resummation schemes for
the pressure of full QCD.Comment: 16 pages including 4 figures. Short enough for you to read. Numerical
results corrected after an error was found by Andreas Ipp and Anton Rebha
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