Equilibration of the Gluon-Minijet Plasma at RHIC and LHC
Abstract
We study the production and equilibration of the gluon-minijet plasma expected to be formed in the central region of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at the BNL-RHIC and the CERN-LHC by solving a self-consistent relativistic transport equation. We compute the minijet production within perturbative QCD. Subsequent collisions among the semi-hard partons are treated by considering the elastic gg -> gg processes with screening of the long wavelength modes taken into account. We determine the time τeq where close to ideal hydrodynamic flow sets in, and find rather similar numbers for central heavy-ion collisions at BNL-RHIC and CERN-LHC energies. The number densities, energy densities and temperatures of the minijet plasma are found to be different at RHIC and LHC, e.g. T(τeq)220 MeV and 380 MeV, respectively.
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