Color Glass Condensate and Glasma

TL;DR

This paper reviews the Color Glass Condensate theory, its application to high energy heavy ion collisions, and recent advances in understanding the formation and thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the CGC framework, the Glasma phase, and recent progress in modeling plasma isotropization and thermalization processes.

Findings

Description of the CGC effective theory and saturation regime

Analysis of the Glasma phase before quark-gluon plasma formation

Recent insights into plasma isotropization and thermalization

Abstract

We review the Color Glass Condensate effective theory, that describes the gluon content of a high energy hadron or nucleus, in the saturation regime. The emphasis is put on applications to high energy heavy ion collisions. After describing initial state factorization, we discuss the Glasma phase, that precedes the formation of an equilibrated quark-gluon plasma. We end this review with a presentation of recent developments in the study of the isotropization and thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma.