Spinodal Decomposition in Finite Temperature SU(2) and SU(3)
Abstract
After a rapid increase in temperature across the deconfinement temperature Td to temperatures T >> Td, pure gauge theories exhibit unstable long wavelength fluctuations in the approach to equilibrium. This phenomenon is analogous to spinodal decomposition observed in condensed matter physics, and also seen in models of disordered chiral condensate formation. At high temperature, the unstable modes occur only in the range 0 < k < kc, where kc is on the order of the Debye screening mass mD. Equilibration always occurs via spinodal decomposition for SU(2). For SU(3) at T near Td, nucleation replaces spinodal decomposition as the dominant equilibration mechanism. Monte Carlo simulations of SU(2) and SU(3) lattice gauge theories exhibit the predicted phenomena. For SU(2), the observed value of kc is in reasonable agreement with a value predicted from previous lattice measurements of mD.
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