  Plasma instabilities can play a fundamental role in plasma equilibration.
There are similarities and differences between plasma instabilities in abelian
and non-abelian gauge theories. In particular, it has been an open question
whether non-abelian self-interactions are the limiting factor in the growth of
non-abelian plasma instabilities. We study this problem with 3+1 dimensional
numerical simulations. We find that non-abelian plasma instabilities behave
very differently from abelian ones once they grow to be non-perturbatively
large, in contrast with earlier results of 1+1 dimensional simulations. In
particular, they grow more slowly at late times, with linear rather than
exponential dependence of magnetic energy on time.
