Initial state and approach to equilibrium

Abstract

A possible resolution of the early thermalisation puzzle is provided by the notion of far-from-equilibrium attractors which arise due to the specific kinematics of heavy-ion collisions. Attractors appear in a wide variety of dynamical models, and it is plausible that they also occur in QCD. The physical implications of these observations depend on how robust this effect is when typically made symmetry restrictions are relaxed. I briefly review this line of research and its perspectives.