Thermalization and quark production in spatially homogeneous systems of gluons

Abstract

We first assemble a full set of the Boltzmann Equation in Diffusion Approximation (BEDA) for studying thermalization/hydrodynamization and quark production in out of equilibrium systems. We then discuss thermalization and the production of three flavors of massless quarks in spatially homogeneous systems initially filled only with gluons. A complete parametric understanding for thermalization and quark production is obtained for both initially very dense or dilute systems, which are complemented by detailed numerical simulations. For initial distributions more relevant for heavy-ion collisions, the complete thermal equilibration is found to be significantly delayed by considering quark production.