Kadanoff-Baym Approach to Thermalization of Gluonic Matter

Abstract

We estimate kinetic equilibration time of gluonic matter (transverse modes) with Kadanoff-Baym equation. We include off-shell g &harr; gg particle number changing processes in 3+1 dimensional dynamics. We show that the gluonic matter approaches to kinetic equilibrium with time scale 1/m with local transverse thermal mass m^2 = <g^2NT^2>/g = (210MeV)2 for g^2 = 1, color N = 3 and T = 360MeV.