Color Diffusion and Conductivity in a Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

Color diffusion is shown to be an important dissipative property of quark-gluon plasmas that rapidly damps collective color modes. We derive the characteristic color relaxation time scale, $t_c\approx (3\alpha_s T \log(m_E/m_M ))^{-1}$, showing its sensitivity to the ratio of the static color electric and magnetic screening masses. This leads to a surprisingly small color conductivity, $\sigma_c\approx 2 T/\log(m_E/m_M)$, which in fact vanishes in the semi-classical (1-loop) limit.