Related papers: Can Thermalization in Heavy Ion Collisions be Desc…
We argue that isotropization and, consequently, thermalization of the system of gluons and quarks produced in an ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision does not follow from Feynman diagram analysis to any order in the coupling constant. We…
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…
Sufficiently energetic collisions of heavy ions result in the formation of a droplet of a strongly coupled liquid state of QCD matter known as quark-gluon plasma. By using gauge-gravity duality (holography), a model of a rapidly…
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…
Heavy-ion colliders have revealed the process of "fast thermalization". This experimental breakthrough has led to new theoretical tools to study the thermalization process at both weak and strong coupling. We apply this to the reheating…
We study thermalization, hydrodynamization, and chemical equilibration in out-of-equilibrium Quark-Gluon Plasma starting from various initial conditions using QCD effective kinetic theory, valid at weak coupling. In non-expanding systems…
At asymptotically high energies, thermalization in heavy ion collisions can be described via weak-coupling QCD. We present a complete treatment of how thermalization proceeds, at the parametric weak-coupling level. We show that plasma…
Hydrodynamical analysis of experimental data of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions seems to indicate that the hot QCD matter created in the collisions thermalizes very quickly. Theoretically, we have no idea why this should be true. In…
We give an updated overview of both weak and strong coupling methods to describe the approach to a plasma described by viscous hydrodynamics, a process now called hydrodynamisation. At weak coupling the very first moments after a heavy ion…
Whether Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) exhibits a phase transition at finite temperature and density is an open question. It is important for hydrodynamic modeling of heavy ion collisions and neutron star mergers. Lattice QCD simulations have…
We propose a new thermalization scenario for heavy ion collisions which at sufficiently high energies implies the phase transition to the quark--gluon plasma. The key ingredient of our approach is the Hawking--Unruh effect: an observer…
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…
To achieve an understanding of the thermalization of a quark-gluon plasma, starting from QCD without using model assumptions, is a formidable task. We study the early stage dynamics of a relativistic heavy ion collision in the framework of…
Ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at the laboratory provide a unique chance to study quantum chromodynamics (QCD) under extreme temperature (${\approx}150\,\mathrm{MeV}$) and density (${\approx}1\,\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{fm}^3$)…
Matter described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, may undergo phase transitions when its temperature and the chemical potentials are varied. QCD at finite temperature is studied in the laboratory by…
Heavy ion collisions pose interesting challenges to quantum chromodynamics, because they probe the parton structure of the incoming nuclei at very small longitudinal momentum fractions. Combined with the large size of nuclei, this may lead…
The phase diagram of quark gluon plasma (QGP) formed at a very early stage just after the heavy ion collision is obtained by using a holographic dual model for the heavy ion collision. In this dual model colliding ions are described by the…
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…
The rapid thermalization of quarks and gluons in the initial stages of relativistic heavy-ion collisions is treated using analytic solutions of a nonlinear diffusion equation with schematic initial conditions, and for gluons with boundary…
High energy heavy-ion collisions in laboratory produce a form of matter that can test Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, at high temperatures. One of the exciting possibilities is the existence of…