paper

The non-equilibrium attractor: Beyond hydrodynamics

arXiv:1904.00413 · doi:10.5506/APhysPolB.50.1243

Abstract

The quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions is not in local thermal equilibrium at early times. Despite this, dissipative hydrodynamics describes the evolution of the energy-momentum tensor quite well after only roughly 0.5 - 1 fm/c. This can be understood using the concept of a non-equilibrium dynamical attractor. The attractor is a uniquely identifiable solution to the dynamical equations to which all solutions are drawn as the system evolves. Once solutions collapse onto the non-equilibrium attractor they are ``pseudo-thermalized'' in the sense that they have lost information about the precise initial conditions used, but are not yet in exact local thermal equilibrium. Here I review recent work which demonstrates that there exists a non-equilibrium attractor in full kinetic theory models which goes beyond the usual low-order momentum moments considered in hydrodynamical treatments.

8 pages, 2 figures; Proceedings contribution for Epiphany 2019, Krakow, 8-11 Jan 2019

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