Nonlocal wave turbulence in non-Abelian plasmas

Abstract

We investigate driven wave turbulence in non-Abelian plasmas, in the framework of kinetic theory where both elastic and inelastic processes are considered in the small angle approximation. The gluon spectrum, that forms in the presence of a steady source, is shown to be controlled by nonlocal interactions in momentum space, in contrast to the universal Kolmogorov–Zakharov spectra. Assuming strongly nonlocal interactions, we show that inelastic processes are dominant in the IR and cause a thermal bath to form below the forcing scale, as a result of a detailed balance between radiation and absorption of soft gluons by the hard ones. Above the forcing scale, the inelastic collision term reduces to an inhomogeneous diffusion-like equation yielding a spectrum that spreads to the UV as t1/2, similarly to elastic processes. Due to nonlocal interactions the non-universal turbulent spectrum is not steady and flattens when time goes on toward the thermal distribution. This analysis is complemented by numerical simulations, where we observe that in the explored time interval the spectral exponent of the nonlocal turbulent cascade is close to −2 in agreement with simulations of classical Yang–Mills equations.