Kinetic evolution of the glasma and thermalization in heavy ion collisions

Abstract

In relativistic heavy ion collisions, a highly occupied gluonic matter is created shortly after initial impact, which is in a non-thermal state and often referred to as the Glasma. Successful phenomenology suggests that the glasma evolves rather quickly toward the thermal quark-gluon plasma and a hydrodynamic behavior emerges at very early time $\sim \hat{o}(1)$ fm/c. Exactly how such "apparent thermalization" occurs and connects the initial conditions to the hydrodynamic onset, remains a significant challenge for theory as well as phenomenology. We briefly review various ideas and recent progress in understanding the approach of the glasma to the thermalized quark-gluon plasma, with an emphasis on the kinetic theory description for the evolution of such far-from-equilibrium and highly overpopulated, thus weakly-coupled yet strongly interacting glasma.

Comments: V1: 39 pages, 5 figures, invited review for Int. J. Mod. Phys. E. V2: published version