Modelling early stages of relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

In this study we model early time dynamics of relativistic heavy ion collisions by an initial color-electric field which then decays to a plasma by the Schwinger mechanism. The dynamics of the many particles system produced by the decay is described by relativistic kinetic theory, taking into account the backreaction on the color field by solving self-consistently the kinetic and the field equations. Our main results concern isotropization and thermalization for a 1+1D expanding geometry. In case of small η/s (η/s ≲ 0.3) we find τisotropization ≈ 0.8 fm/c and τthermalization ≈ 1 fm/c in agreement with the common lore of hydrodynamics.