Quark production, Bose-Einstein condensates and thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma

Understand

In this paper, we study the thermalization of gluons and N_f flavors of massless quarks and antiquarks in a spatially homogeneous system.

• First, two coupled transport equations for gluons and quarks (and antiquarks) are derived within the diffusion approximation of the Boltzmann equation, with only 2<-> 2 processes included in the collision term.
• Then, these transport equations are solved numerically in order to study the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma.
• At initial time, we assume that no quarks or antiquarks are present and we choose the gluon distribution in the form f = f_0 theta (1-p/Q_s) with Q_s the saturation momentum and f_0 a constant.