Thermal, chemical and spectral equilibration in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We have considered the equilibration in a relativistic heavy ion collision using our transport model. We applied periodic boundary conditions to close the system in a box. We found that the thermal equilibration takes place in the first 20-40 fm/c which time is comparable to the duration of a heavy ion collision. The chemical equilibration is a much slower process and the system does not equilibrate in a heavy ion collision. We have also shown that the mass spectra of broad resonances immediately follows their in-medium spectral functions.