Collective Modes of an Anisotropic Quark - Gluon Plasma

We analyze the collective modes of high-temperature QCD in the case when there is an anisotropy in the momentum-space distribution function for the gluons. We perform a tensor decomposition of the gluon self-energy and solve the dispersion relations for both stable and unstable modes. Results are presented for a class of anisotropic distribution functions which can be obtained by stretching or squeezing an isotropic distribution function along one direction in momentum space. We find that there are three stable modes and either one or two unstable modes depending on whether the distribution function is stretched or squeezed. The presence of unstable modes which have exponential growth can lead to a more rapid thermalization and isotropization of the soft modes in a quark gluon plasma and therefore may play an important role in the dynamical evolution of a quark-gluon plasma. PACS numbers: 11.15Bt, 04.25.Nx, 11.10Wx, 12.38Mh