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Viscosities of quark-gluon plasmas

Journal Article · · Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (United States)
 [1]
  1. Nuclear Science Division, MS70A-3307, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)

The quark and gluon viscosities are calculated in quark-gluon plasmas to leading orders in the coupling constant by including screening. For weakly interacting QCD and QED plasmas, dynamical screening of transverse interactions and Debye screening of longitudinal interactions controls the infrared divergences. For strongly interacting plasmas other screening mechanisms taken from lattice calculations are employed. By solving the Boltzmann equation for quarks and gluons including screening, the viscosity is calculated to leading orders in the coupling constant. The leading logarithmic order is calculated exactly by a full variational treatment. The next to leading orders are found to be important for the transport properties of quark-gluon plasmas created in relativistic heavy ion collisions and the early Universe, where the coupling constant is large.

OSTI ID:
5074084
Journal Information:
Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (United States), Journal Name: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (United States) Vol. 49:9; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English