Initial conditions for hydrodynamics from weakly coupled pre-equilibrium evolution

Abstract

We use effective kinetic theory, accurate at weak coupling, to simulate the pre-equilibrium evolution of transverse energy and flow perturbations in heavy-ion collisions. We provide a Green function which propagates the initial perturbations to the energy-momentum tensor at a time when hydrodynamics becomes applicable. With this map, the complete pre-thermal evolution from saturated nuclei to hydrodynamics can be modelled in a perturbatively controlled way.

Comments: 25 pages, 9 figures (prepared for submission to JHEP). Differences from version 1: updated figures 3(b), 5, 7, 8 and 9, replaced appendix A