Hard gluon evolution in the last stage of the bottom-up thermalization

Abstract

The study of how fast thermalization in heavy ion collisions occurs has been one of the central topics in the heavy ion community. In the weak coupling picture this thermalization occurs from 'the bottom up': high energy partons, formed early in the collision, radiate low energy gluons which then proceed to equilibrate among themselves, forming a thermal bath that brings the high energy sector to equilibrium. In this scheme we apply a model on parton energy loss to discuss the effects of medium expansion on the thermalization problem and estimate the average transverse momentum diffusivity for thermalization in a Bjorken expanding medium.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Current version includes updated references and a more detailed discussion on the underlying assumption