We consider forced tunneling in QCD, described semiclassically by instanton–anti-instanton field configurations. By separating topologically different minima we obtain details of the effective potential and study the turning states, which are similar to the sphaleron solution in electroweak theory. These states are alternatively derived as minima of the energy under the constraints of fixed size and Chern-Simons number. We study, both analytically and numerically, the subsequent evolution of such states by solving the classical Yang-Mills equations in real time, and find that the gauge field strength is quickly localized into an expanding shell of radiating gluons. The relevance to high-energy collisions of hadrons and nuclei is briefly discussed.

• Received 25 April 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.66.036004