Collective non-Abelian instabilities in a melting Color Glass Condensate

Abstract

We present first results for 3+1-D simulations of SU(2) Yang-Mills equations for matter expanding into the vacuum after a heavy ion collision. Violations of boost invariance cause a Weibel instability leading soft modes to grow with proper time $τ$ as $\exp(Γ\sqrt{g^2μτ})$, where $g^2μ$ is a scale arising from the saturation of gluons in the nuclear wavefunction. The scale for the growth rate $Γ$ is set by a plasmon mass, defined as $ω_{\rm pl}= κ_0 \sqrt{\frac{g^2μ}τ}$, generated dynamically in the collision. We compare the numerical ratio $Γ/κ_0$ to the corresponding value predicted by the Hard Thermal Loop formalism for anisotropic plasmas.