Non-perturbative dynamics of hot non-Abelian gauge fields

Abstract

The dynamics of high temperature gauge fields, on scales relevant for non-perturbative phenomena such as electroweak baryogenesis, may be described by a remarkably simple effective theory. This theory, which takes the form of a local, stochastic, classical Yang-Mills theory, depends on a single parameter, the non-Abelian (or ``color'') conductivity. This effective theory has recently been shown to be valid to next-to-leading-log order (NLLO), provided one uses an improved NLLO value for the non-Abelian conductivity. Comparisons of numerical simulations using this NLLO effective theory and a more microscopic effective theory agree surprisingly well.