Molecular dynamics simulation of strongly coupled QCD plasmas Original Research Article

The properties of a strongly interacting quark plasma are investigated by molecular dynamics method including non-abelian quark-quark potential. Our main goal is to study the thermalization process in this system. We find an interesting resonance-like behaviour: at a characteristic time close to the inverse plasma frequency the quark plasma is heated up substantially via energy transfer from quark potential energy into one particle kinetic energy. Color rotation mechanism enhances the effectivity of this heating process, leading to a very fast thermalization with high temperature.