BFKL equation at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper derives a thermal version of the BFKL equation within the Color Glass Condensate framework, revealing that high temperatures enhance soft gluon emissions and may accelerate the onset of saturation in quark-gluon plasma conditions.

Contribution

It introduces the thermal BFKL equation considering finite temperature effects in the CGC, highlighting Bose enhancement of soft gluons at high temperatures.

Findings

Thermal effects cause Bose enhancement in soft gluon emission.

High temperature can lead to earlier saturation in the gluon density.

Thermal BFKL equation extends understanding of gluon dynamics in quark-gluon plasma.

Abstract

We consider the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) at finite temperature, which would be relevant to the initial condition of relativistic heavy ion collisions and the energy loss of energetic partons in the quark-gluon plasma. In the weak source approximation, we derive the thermal BFKL equation. We find that the thermal effect shows up as a Bose enhancement of the soft gluon emission if the temperature is high enough to match the light-cone energy of the soft gluons. This suggests that the saturation regime could be reached sooner than in the vacuum.