  We present a first principles study of chiral plasma instabilities and the
onset of chiral turbulence in QED plasmas far from equilibrium. By performing
classical-statistical lattice simulations of the microscopic theory, we show
that the generation of strong helical magnetic fields from a helicity imbalance
in the fermion sector proceeds via three distinct phases. During the initial
linear instability regime the helicity imbalance of the fermion sector causes
an exponential growth(damping) of magnetic field modes with right(left) handed
polarization, for which we extract the characteristic growth (damping) rates.
Secondary growth of unstable modes accelerates the helicity transfer from
fermions to gauge fields and ultimately leads to the emergence of a
self-similar scaling regime characteristic of decaying turbulence, where
magnetic helicity is efficiently transferred to macroscopic length scales.
Within this turbulent regime the evolution of magnetic helicity spectrum can be
described by an infrared power-spectrum with spectral exponent $\kappa$ and
dynamical scaling exponents $\alpha,\beta$, which we determine from our
simulations.
