Matching of nonthermal initial conditions and hydrodynamic stage in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

A simple approach is proposed allowing actual calculations of the preequilibrium dynamics in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions to be performed for a far-from-equilibrium initial state. The method is based on the phenomenological macroscopic equations that describe the relaxation dynamics of the energy-momentum tensor and are motivated by Boltzmann kinetics in the relaxation-time approximation. It gives the possibility to match smoothly a nonthermal initial state to the hydrodynamics of the quark gluon plasma. The model contains two parameters, the duration of the prehydrodynamic stage and the initial value of the relaxation-time parameter, and allows one to assess the energy-momentum tensor at a supposed time of initialization of the hydrodynamics.

Comments: 16 pages, minor corrections, to appear in Phys. Rev. C