Thermal features far from equilibrium: Prethermalization

Abstract

The phenomenon of prethermalization and the subsequent steps of thermalization are analyzed in the framework of the chiral quark model. We solve the quantum equations of motion of the field theory derived from the 2PI effective action and study the time scales of equilibration. We find that already after a 0.6 fm/c long period of time some equilibrium features appear, even though the system is still far from equilibrium. This might be an ingredient for understanding the success of ideal hydrodynamic description.

LaTeX, 5 pages. Contribution to the Proceedings of 6th Conference on Strong and Electroweak Matter 2004 (SEWM04), Helsinki, Finland, 16-19 Jun 2004