Chemical thermalization in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

We compute by numerical integration of the Dirac equation the number of quark-antiquark pairs initially produced in the classical color fields of colliding ultrarelativistic nuclei. While the number of qqbar pairs is parametrically suppressed in the coupling constant, we find that in this classical field model their production rate is comparable to the thermal ratio of gluons/pairs = 9 N_f/32. After isotropization one thus would have quark-gluon plasma in chemical equilibrium.

4 pages, 6 figures, RevTEX. V2: Small clarifications, references added. Published in PRL