Thermal and chemical equilibration in a gluon plasma

Abstract

We show the evolution of a gluon plasma towards equilibrium starting at some early moment when the momentum distribution in the central region is momentaneously isotropic. Using HIJING results for Au+Au collision as initial input, we consider thermalization and chemical equilibration simultaneously at both LHC and RHIC energies. Thermalization is shown to be driven chiefly by inelastic process in our scenario contradicting common assumption that this is the role of elastic process. We argue that only the inelastic dominancy depends on the initial conditions but not the dominance itself.