Back-reaction in the presence of thermalizing collisions

Abstract

Preequilibrium parton production following an ultrarelativistic nucleus--nucleus collision is studied in terms of the decay of a strong chromoelectric field which generates pairs through the Schwinger mechanism. Back-reaction of the partons with the field is included and a model transport equation containing a collision term is solved for the central rapidity region based on an approximation in which the partons relax to a thermal distribution.

Nine pages plus two figures; added note concerning earlier work by B. Banerjee, R.S. Bhalerao, and V. Ravishankar