Color Glass Condensate and Glasma

Abstract

We review the Color Glass Condensate effective theory, that describes the gluon content of a high energy hadron or nucleus, in the saturation regime. The emphasis is put on applications to high energy heavy ion collisions. After describing initial state factorization, we discuss the Glasma phase, that precedes the formation of an equilibrated quark-gluon plasma. We end this review with a presentation of recent developments in the study of the isotropization and thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma.

Invited review for International Journal of Modern Physics; based on lectures given at the 22nd Jyvaskyla Summer School, August 2012; 55 pages; v2: some extra references