Speakers
Description
The early far-from equilibrium dynamics of the pre-hydrodynamic quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formed in heavy ion collisions can be characterized by distinct stages, during each of which the system loses some memory of its initial condition, until only the hydrodynamic modes remain. In QCD kinetic theory, this attractor behavior has been described in terms of self-similar scaling solutions for the particle distribution function during each stage, even at times well before hydrodynamization. Studying a simplified QCD kinetic theory in the small-angle scattering limit in terms of an effective Hamiltonian evolution, we have shown that, after an appropriate coordinate rescaling, the pre-hydrodynamic plasma can be described by the adiabatic evolution of a time-dependent ground state, which is the attractor. This adiabatic formulation yields a unified description of both early- and late-time attractors, including the evolution from one attractor to another. Furthermore, it provides an intuitive physical explanation for the emergence of the attractor behavior itself. The first explicit construction realizing all of these goals employed a kinetic theory including only elastic scatterings, leading to unrealistically long hydrodynamization times. In this talk I will present the unified adiabatic description of pre-hydrodynamic attractors, introduce inelastic scatterings, show that their inclusion dramatically reduces the hydrodynamization time, and discuss their further consequences.
| Category | Theory |
|---|
