Evolution of initial stage fluctuations in the glasma

Abstract

We perform a calculation of the one- and two-point correlation functions of energy density and axial charge deposited in the glasma in the initial stage of a heavy ion collision at finite proper time. We do this by describing the initial stage of heavy ion collisions in terms of freely evolving classical fields whose dynamics obey the linearized Yang-Mills equations. Our approach allows us to systematically resum the contributions of high momentum modes that would make a power series expansion in proper time divergent. We evaluate the field correlators in the McLerran-Venugopalan model using the glasma graph approximation, but our approach for the time dependence can be applied to a general four-point function of the initial color fields. Our results provide analytical insight into the preequilibrium phase of heavy ion collisions without requiring a numerical solution to the Yang-Mills equations.