QCD Transport Theory

Abstract

Because of the long range of the gauge interactions, the collective behaviour of quarks and gluons plays a decisive role in the transport processes. Collective effects, like Debye screening and Landau damping, remove the unphysical infrared divergences of the transport cross-sections and provide finite relaxation rates. I review here a theory of the plasma collective excitations that has been recently developed. It is based on kinetic equations derived from the general QCD Dyson-Schwinger equations, in the weak coupling limit. I present new, truly non-abelian, collective excitations, which correspond to nonlinear color oscillations of the QCD plasma.