Abstract
We follow the time evolution of non-Abelian gauge bosons from far-from-equilibrium initial conditions to thermal equilibrium by numerically solving an effective kinetic equation that becomes accurate in the weak coupling limit. We consider isotropic initial conditions that are either highly overoccupied or underoccupied. We find that overoccupied systems thermalize through a self-similar cascade reaching equilibrium in multiples of a thermalization time , whereas underoccupied systems undergo a “bottom-up” thermalization in a time , where is the characteristic momentum scale of the initial condition. We apply this result to model initial stages of heavy-ion collisions and find rapid thermalization roughly in a time or .
- Received 6 June 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.182301
© 2014 American Physical Society