Strong Coupling Improved Equilibration In High Energy Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

In high energy nuclear collisions, most calculations on the early equilibration of the parton plasma showed that the system does not come close to full equilibrium, especially for the fermion components. However, since the system is constantly evolving, the cooling effect due to expansion will lead to a decrease of the average parton energies. So the interactions should be enhanced by a corresponding increase of the running coupling. We show that this leads to a faster and improved equilibration. This improvement is more important for the fermions compensating partially for their weaker interactions and slower equilibration.