A Possible Modified "bottom-up" Thermalization in Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

We present a possible scaling solution to pre-equilibrium evolution which interpolates between the instability present in the dense gluon system produced immediately after a heavy ion collision and the final equilibration which occurs later. Our solution depends on a single parameter $\delta$. Depending on the value of $\delta$, our proposed solution matches onto the bottom-up picture either at an intermediate stage or toward the end of the evolution given by bottom-up. We discuss in detail the reasons why we believe our solution is self-consistent, and we also point out why it is difficult to actually prove consistency.