Informal Pizza Seminar

Plasma instabilities in nonequilibrium QCD

Guy D. Moore

McGill

The early universe was filled with a QCD plasma at a very high density; so, probably, is the central region right after a heavy ion collision. In a heavy ion collision, this region undergoes rapid, asymmetrical expansion; and the only situations in which the QCD plasma in the early universe may leave observable records also involve strongly nonequilibrium, generally asymmetric situations. Electromagnetic plasmas under similar circumstances show a variety of instabilities; the growth and saturation of such instabilities generally dominate their dynamics. I will show that the same is probably true for QCD, but that the behavior of gauge-field instabilities is strongly modified because the theory is nonabelian. Nonabelian gauge field instabilities should be important but will have less dramatic consequences than in the case of electromagnetism.