Contributions of stochastic background fields to the shear and bulk viscosities of the gluon plasma Original Research Article

The contributions of confining as well as nonconfining nonperturbative self-interactions of stochastic background fields to the shear and bulk viscosities of the gluon plasma in SU(3) Yang–Mills theory are calculated. The nonconfining self-interactions change (specifically, diminish) the values of the shear and bulk viscosities by 15%, that is close to the 17% which the strength of the nonconfining self-interaction amounts to the full strength of nonperturbative self-interactions. The ratios to the entropy density of the obtained nonperturbative contributions to the shear and bulk viscosities are compared with the results of perturbation theory and the predictions of image = 4 SYM.