I don’t think that anybody is able to measure gluon distribution function at these time scales, so yes, Rayleigh-Jeans is working hypothesis. What is observed in particular is the effective equation of state of the QGP, which reaches its equilibrium value at early times.

Cheers,
Dmitry.

But if information is lost at 10 fm/c already, how can one prove that prethermalization actually takes place and phase coherence of QGP is still unbroken? Is there experimental evidence for the Rayleigh-Jeans distribution function or is it just a working hypothesis regarding what happens prior to hadronization?

Regards,

Ervin

I think, you want to say that intermediate time behavior of gluon distribution functions is described by dynamical RG fixed point. I have no idea – maybe yes, maybe no, anyway, already at 10 fm/c hadronization happens and almost all information about this early stage is lost.

My impression is that QGP is not thermalized completely (at least not at short time scales I am talking about), instead, instead, what is called prethermalization happens:
gluon occupation numbers are still extremely high at fm/c, Boltzmann exponential tail is definitely not what is seen. On the other hand, gluon distribution function can be approximately described by Rayleigh-Jeans, so a kind of effective temperature is present in the system – this is what I meant by prethermalization. The nice thing is that prethermalization
(contrary to full thermalization) does not automatically imply that coherence pattern in the IR breaks down.

Cheers,
Dmitry.

Is it possible that some sort of absorbing phase transition (APT)occurs at very short times in glasma? This phase transition may be able to sustain coherence of gluon plasma and prevent thermalization beyond the hadronization time scale. It is known that APT drives components in reaction-diffusion processes to fall into absorbing states where thermal fluctuations are strongly suppresed. Your thoughts?

Regards,

Ervin

Yes, everything was in units fm/c. Thanks a lot!

Dmitry.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite understand what a color glass condensate (and glasma) is, even though you made a good job in saying where it is (the context) and what it is not.

Would you mind inserting a real definition into your text? Thanks a bucket.