Thermalization of gluons at RHIC: Dependence on initial conditions

Abstract

We investigate how thermalization of gluons depends on the initial conditions assumed in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC. The study is based on simulations employing the pQCD inspired parton cascade solving the Boltzmann equation for gluons. We consider independently produced minijets with $p_T > p_0=1.3 \sim 2.0$ GeV and a color glass condensate as possible initial conditions for the freed gluons. It turns out that full kinetic equilibrium is achieved slightly sooner in denser system and its timescale tends to saturate. Compared with the kinetic equilibration we find a stronger dependence of chemical equilibration on the initial conditions.