arXiv · 1402.5578
Kinetic evolution of the glasma and thermalization in heavy ion collisions
Abstract
In relativistic heavy ion collisions, a highly occupied gluonic matter is created shortly after initial impact, which is in a non-thermal state and often referred to as the Glasma. Successful phenomenology suggests that the glasma evolves rather quickly toward the thermal quark-gluon plasma and a hydrodynamic behavior emerges at very early time $\sim \hat{o}(1)$ fm/c. Exactly how such "apparent thermalization" occurs and connects the initial conditions to the hydrodynamic onset, remains a significant challenge for theory as well as phenomenology. We briefly review various ideas and recent progress in understanding the approach of the glasma to the thermalized quark-gluon plasma, with an emphasis on the kinetic theory description for the evolution of such far-from-equilibrium and highly overpopulated, thus weakly-coupled yet strongly interacting glasma.
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Xu-Guang Huang, Jinfeng Liao. 2014-02-23. Kinetic evolution of the glasma and thermalization in heavy ion collisions. https://doi.org/10.1142/s0218301314300033
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