Related papers: Soft-gluon exchange matters: isotropic screening i…
This thesis focuses on how jets are modified by the nonequilibrium quark-gluon plasma during the initial stages in heavy-ion collisions. Its influence on their propagation is typically encoded in a single medium function, the dipole cross…
Measuring the energy loss of energetic jet partons may provide experimental opportunities to constrain the initial nonequilibrium stages in heavy-ion collisions, which requires theoretical predictions for the jet-medium potential. In this…
We study the kinetic equilibration of gluons produced in the very early stages of a high energy heavy ion collision in a ``self-consistent'' relaxation time approximation. We compare two scenarios describing the initial state of the gluon…
In this work we study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a quark-gluon plasma, as created in heavy-ion collisions. We investigate how big of a role plasma instabilities can play in the isotropization and equilibration of a quark-gluon plasma.…
To describe momentum isotropization of gluon matter produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, the transport rate of gluon drift and the transport collision rates of elastic ($gg \leftrightarrow gg$) as well as inelastic ($gg…
We employ a non-equilibrium Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) kinetic description to study the kinetic and chemical equilibration of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) at weak coupling. Based on our numerical framework, which explicitly includes all…
The collective modes of QCD at temperatures and densities above its phase-transition are analyzed for isotropic systems as well as for systems having an anisotropy in momentum-space using the HTL approximation. For isotropic systems,…
Due to the rapid longitudinal expansion of the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions, large local-rest-frame momentum-space anisotropies are generated during the system's evolution. These momentum-space anisotropies complicate…
We address the role of fluctuations in strongly interacting matter during the dense stages of a heavy-ion collision through its electromagnetic emission. Fluctuations of isospin charge are considered in a thermal system at rest as well as…
The initial distribution of gluons at the very early times after a high energy heavy ion collision is described by the bulk scale $Q_s$ of gluon saturation in the nuclear wavefunction. The subsequent evolution of the system towards kinetic…
Heavy-ion collisions at BNL's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and CERN's Large Hadron Collider provide strong evidence for the formation of a quark-gluon plasma, with temperatures extracted from relativistic viscous hydrodynamic simulations…
In this proceedings contribution I review recent work in kinetic theory which demonstrates that, for system undergoing Bjorken expansion, there exists an attractor in all moments of the one-particle distribution function. I discuss how this…
We investigate the thermalization and the chemical equilibration of a parton plasma created from Au+Au collision at LHC and RHIC energies starting from the early moment when the particle momentum distributions in the central region become…
We study the effect of including a BGK collisional kernel on the collective modes of a QCD plasma which has a hard-particle distribution function which is anisotropic in momentum space. We calculate dispersion relations for both the stable…
A set of kinetic equations is used to study equilibration of the anisotropic quark-gluon plasma produced by decays of color flux tubes possibly created at the very early stages of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The decay rates of…
I review our current understanding of the processes driving the thermalization and isotropization of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions (URHICs). I begin by discussing the phenomenological…
We introduce a novel numerical method to obtain the gluon splitting rates in an anisotropic QCD plasma in the AMY formalism, suitable for an anisotropic collision kernel. The method extends previous works by decomposing the additional…
Non-equilibrium corrections to the distribution functions of quarks and gluons in a hot and dense QCD medium modify the "hard thermal loops" (HTL). The HTLs determine the retarded, advanced, and symmetric (time-ordered) propagators for…
We report here recent analytical and numerical work on the theoretical treatment of the early stages of heavy ion collisions, that amounts to solving the classical Yang-Mills equations with fluctuating initial conditions. Our numerical…
We present an introductory review of the early time dynamics of high-energy heavy-ion collisions and the kinetics of high temperature QCD. The equilibration mechanisms in the quark-gluon plasma uniquely reflect the non-abelian and…