Non-Abelian chiral instabilities at high temperature on the lattice

Abstract

We report on an exploratory lattice study on the phenomenon of chiral instabilities in non-Abelian gauge theories at high temperature. It is based on a recently constructed anomalous Langevin-type effective theory of classical soft gauge fields in the presence of a chiral number density $n_5=n_{\rm R}-n_{\rm L}$. Evaluated in thermal equilibrium using classical lattice techniques it reveals that the fluctuating soft fields indeed exhibit a rapid energy increase at early times and we observe a clear dependence of the diffusion rate of topological charge (sphaleron rate) on the the initial $n_5$, relevant in both early universe baryogenesis and relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The topological charge furthermore shows a drift among distinct vacuum sectors, roughly proportional to the initial $n_5$ and in turn the chiral imbalance is monotonously reduced as required by helicity conservation.