BFKL equation at finite temperature

Abstract

We consider the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) at finite temperature, which would be relevant to the initial condition of relativistic heavy ion collisions and the energy loss of energetic partons in the quark-gluon plasma. In the weak source approximation, we derive the thermal BFKL equation. We find that the thermal effect shows up as a Bose enhancement of the soft gluon emission if the temperature is high enough to match the light-cone energy of the soft gluons. This suggests that the saturation regime could be reached sooner than in the vacuum.