Non-Abelian plasma instabilities: SU(3) versus SU(2)

We present the first 3 + 1 dimensional simulations of non-Abelian plasma instabilities in gauge-covariant Boltzmann-Vlasov equations for the QCD gauge group SU(3) as well as for SU(4) and SU(5). The real-time evolution of instabilities for a plasma with stationary momentum-space anisotropy is studied using a hard-loop effective theory that is discretized in the velocities of hard particles. We find that the numerically less expensive calculations using the group SU(2) essentially reproduce the nonperturbative dynamics of non-Abelian plasma instabilities with higher rank gauge groups provided the mass parameters of the corresponding hard-loop effective theories are the same. In particular, we find very similar spectra for the turbulent cascade that forms in the strong-field regime, which is associated with an approximately linear growth of energy in collective fields. The magnitude of the linear growth however turns out to increase with the number of colors.