The early stages of a high energy heavy ion collision

TL;DR

This paper discusses how the Color Glass Condensate framework models the initial phase of high energy heavy ion collisions, emphasizing gluon saturation effects relevant at RHIC and LHC energies.

Contribution

It applies the Color Glass Condensate approach to describe the early stages of heavy ion collisions, highlighting gluon saturation phenomena.

Findings

Gluon saturation influences initial collision dynamics

Color Glass Condensate effectively models early collision stages

Provides insights into high-density gluon distributions

Abstract

At high energy, the gluon distribution in nuclei reaches large densities and eventually saturates due to recombinations, that play an important role in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC. The Color Glass Condensate provides a framework for resumming these effects in the calculation of observables. In this talk, I present its application to the description of the early stages of heavy ion collisions.