2014/09/02 by Jürgen Berges, Björn Schenke, Sören Schlichting +1 · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Attractor #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Coupling (piping) #Heavy ion #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Ion #Lattice (music) #Materials science #Mathematics #Mechanics #Physics #Plasma #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Thermalisation #Turbulence #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2014.08.103
Proceedings for Quark Matter 2014, Darmstadt (Germany), May 19-24, 2014
openalex publication_date 2014/09/02 · arxiv created 2014/09/05 · arxiv updated 2014/09/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We discuss the onset of the thermalization process in high-energy heavy-ion collisions from a weak coupling perspective, using classical-statistical real-time lattice simulations as a first principles tool to study the pre-equilibrium dynamics. Most remarkably, we find that the thermalization process is governed by a universal attractor, where the space-time evolution of the plasma becomes independent of the initial conditions and exhibits the self-similar dynamics characteristic of wave turbulence. We discuss the consequences of our weak coupling results for the thermalization process in heavy-ion experiments and briefly comment on the use of weak coupling techniques at larger values of the coupling.