THE EXPULSION OF CHROMOMAGNETIC FIELDS

Abstract

The time evolution of a classical gauge field configuration of the form of a uniform chromomagnetic field plus an added perturbation propotional to the unstable zero mode in the uniform background is studied numerically by means of the classical lattice field equations. It turns out that the decay process has two distinct stages. In the first stage, the unstable mode grows with time exponentially, as expected from the linearized equations of motion. This stage comes to an end when the magnetic field in the perturbation region reaches zero and reverses direction, making the unstable zero mode stable and vice versa. The second phase is characterized by the oscillation of the magnetic field around the zero value in the region of the initial perturbation and its gradual expulsion from the surrounding region, with the boundaries between the low field region and the high field region moving out at the speed of light. The energy of the vanished magnetic field is converted into the energy of the electric field induced according to Faraday's law.