Thermal, chemical and spectral equilibration in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates thermal and chemical equilibration processes in relativistic heavy-ion collisions using a transport model, revealing rapid thermal but slow chemical equilibration, and linking resonance spectra to in-medium spectral functions.

Contribution

It introduces a transport model with periodic boundary conditions to study equilibration, providing new insights into the timescales and spectral behavior in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Thermal equilibration occurs within 20-40 fm/c.

Chemical equilibration does not occur during the collision.

Resonance mass spectra follow in-medium spectral functions.

Abstract

We have considered the equilibration in a relativistic heavy ion collision using our transport model. We applied periodic boundary conditions to close the system in a box. We found that the thermal equilibration takes place in the first 20-40 fm/c which time is comparable to the duration of a heavy ion collision. The chemical equilibration is a much slower process and the system does not equilibrate in a heavy ion collision. We have also shown that the mass spectra of broad resonances immediately follows their in-medium spectral functions.