Bjorken flow, plasma instabilities, and thermalization

Thermalization and plasma instabilities

I review recent analytical and numerical advances in the study of non-equilibrium quarkgluon plasma physics. I concentrate on studies of the dynamics of plasmas which are locally anisotropic in momentum space. In contrast to locally isotropic plasmas such anisotropic plasmas have a spectrum of soft unstable modes which are characterized by exponential growth of transverse (chromo)-magnetic fiel...

Quark-gluon Plasma Thermalization and Plasma Instabilities

Here is a basic question: What is the (local) thermalization time for quarkgluon plasmas (QGPs) in heavy ion collisions? That’s a difficult question, so let’s ask a simpler one: What is it for arbitrarily high energy collisions, where the running coupling constant is small, αs ≪ 1? Even that turns out to be complicated, so let me focus on an even simpler version, first posed by Baier, Mueller, ...

QCD Plasma Instabilities and Bottom-Up Thermalization

A Holographic Dual of Bjorken Flow

We propose a consistent setup for a holographic dual of Bjorken flow of strongly coupled large-Nc N=4 SYM-theory plasma. We employ Eddington-Finkelstein type coordinates for the dual geometry, and we propose a late-time expansion there. We construct the dual geometry order by order, and we show that the transport coefficients are determined by the regularity of the geometry. We also show that t...

Flow Results and Hints of Incomplete Thermalization

We classified v2 measurements according to their sensitivities w.r.t. to two planes, namely, reaction plane and participant plane. Likewise, in v2/ǫ scaling, we showed that one needs to choose a ǫ that is sensitive to the same plane as that v2 is sensitive to. We presented our v2/ǫ as a function of centrality and transverse momentum. We studied the ratio of v4/v 2 2 . We discussed the applicabl...