Non-equilibrium attractor in high-temperature QCD plasmas

Abstract

We establish the existence of a far-from-equilibrium attractor in weakly-coupled gauge theory undergoing 0+1d Bjorken expansion which goes beyond the energy-momentum tensor to the detailed form of the one-particle distribution function. We then demonstrate that the dynamics can be re-scaled at intermediate times and represented by universal exponents. Finally, we assess different procedures for reconstructing the full one-particle distribution function from the energy-momentum tensor along the attractor and discuss implications for the freeze-out procedure used in the phenomenological analysis of ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions