Thermalization and the chromo-Weibel instability

被引:33
作者
Strickland, Michael [1 ]
机构
[1] Goethe Univ Frankfurt, Frankfurt Inst Adv Studies, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany
关键词
D O I
10.1088/0954-3899/34/8/S31
中图分类号
O57 [原子核物理学、高能物理学];
学科分类号
070202 ;
摘要
Despite the apparent success of ideal hydrodynamics in describing the elliptic flow data which have been produced at Brookhaven National Lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, one lingering question remains: is the use of ideal hydrodynamics at times t<1 fm/c justified? In order to justify its use, a method for rapidly producing isotropic thermal matter at RHIC energies is required. One of the chief obstacles to rapid isotropization/thermalization is the rapid longitudinal expansion of the matter during the earliest times after the initial nuclear impact. As a result of this expansion, the parton distribution functions become locally anisotropic in momentum space. In contrast to locally isotropic plasmas, anisotropic plasmas have a spectrum of soft unstable modes which are characterized by an exponential growth of transverse chromo-magnetic/-electric fields at short times. This instability is the QCD analogue of the Weibel instability of QED. Parametrically, the chromo-Weibel instability provides the fastest method for generation of soft background fields and dominates the short-time dynamics of the system.
引用
收藏
页码:S429 / S435
页数:7
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