A real-time lattice simulation of the thermalization of a gluon plasma: first results

Abstract

To achieve an understanding of the thermalization of a quark-gluon plasma, starting from QCD without using model assumptions, is a formidable task. We study the early stage dynamics of a relativistic heavy ion collision in the framework of real time simulations of classical Yang-Mills theory in a static box with the color glass condensate as initial condition. Our study generalizes a previous one by Fukushima and Gelis from SU(2) to the realistic case of SU(3). We calculate the chromo-electric and chromo-magnetic energy densities as well as the ratio of longitudinal and transverse pressure as a function of time as probes for thermalization. Our preliminary results on coarse lattices show the occurrence of Weibel instabilities prior to thermalization.