Equilibration of weakly coupled QCD plasmas

TL;DR

This paper uses a non-equilibrium QCD kinetic approach to study how weakly coupled quark-gluon plasmas reach thermal and chemical equilibrium, including effects of expansion relevant to heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical framework that explicitly includes all leading order processes for light flavors, providing detailed insights into equilibration time scales and dynamics.

Findings

Determined the time scales for kinetic and chemical equilibration.

Simulated the evolution of expanding QGP in heavy-ion collisions.

Analyzed the microscopic processes driving thermalization.

Abstract

We employ a non-equilibrium Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) kinetic description to study the kinetic and chemical equilibration of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) at weak coupling. Based on our numerical framework, which explicitly includes all leading order processes involving light flavor degrees of freedom, we investigate the thermalization process of homogeneous and isotropic plasmas far-from equilibrium and determine the relevant time scales for kinetic and chemical equilibration. We further simulate the longitudinally expanding pre-equilibrium plasma created in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at zero and non-zero density of the conserved charges and study its microscopic and macroscopic evolution towards equilibrium.