Time-Dependent Observables in Heavy Ion Collisions II: in Search of Pressure Isotropization in the ${\phi }^4$ Theory

Abstract

To understand the dynamics of thermalization in heavy ion collisions in the perturbative framework it is essential to first find corrections to the free-streaming classical gluon fields of the McLerran-Venugopalan model. The corrections that lead to deviations from free streaming (and that dominate at late proper time) would provide evidence for the onset of isotropization (and, possibly, thermalization) of the produced medium. To find such corrections we calculate the late-time two-point Green function and the energy-momentum tensor due to a single $2\to 2$ scattering process involving two classical fields. To make the calculation tractable we employ the scalar ${\phi }^4$ theory instead of QCD. We compare our exact diagrammatic results for these quantities to those in kinetic theory and find disagreement between the two. The disagreement is in the dependence on the proper time $\tau$ and, for the case of the two-point function, is also in the dependence on the space-time rapidity $\eta$: the exact diagrammatic calculation is, in fact, consistent with the free streaming scenario. Kinetic theory predicts a build-up of longitudinal pressure, which, however, is not observed in the exact calculation. We conclude that we find no evidence for the beginning of the transition from the free-streaming classical fields to the kinetic theory description of the produced matter after a single $2\to 2$ rescattering.

46 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (8)

• The Color Glass Condensate
• Holography and colliding gravitational shock waves in asymptotically AdS_5 spacetime
• Isotropization and hydrodynamization in weakly coupled heavy-ion collisions
• Energy density of the Glasma
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Cited by in corpus (3)

• First Saturation Correction in High Energy Proton-Nucleus Collisions: I. Time evolution of classical Yang-Mills fields beyond leading order
• Quantum corrections to the Classical Statistical Approximation for the expanding quantum field
• Time-Dependent Observables in Heavy Ion Collisions I: Setting up the Formalism