title: Apparent thermalization due to plasma instabilities in the quark-gluon plasma.
abstract: Hydrodynamical modeling of heavy-ion collisions at RHIC suggests that the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) "thermalizes" in a remarkably short time scale, about 0.6 fm/c. We argue that this should be viewed as indicating fast isotropization, but not necessarily complete thermalization, of the nonequilibrium QGP. Non-Abelian plasma instabilities can drive local isotropization of an anisotropic QGP on a time scale which is faster than ordinary perturbative scattering processes. As a result, we argue that theoretical expectations based on weak-coupling analysis are not necessarily in conflict with hydrodynamic modeling of the early part of RHIC collisions, provided one recognizes the key role of non-Abelian plasma instabilities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22901, USA.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Arnold
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lenaghan
authors.forename: Guy D
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Moore
authors.forename: Laurence G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Yaffe