Chemical thermalization in relativistic heavy ion collisions.
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 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=9Nf/32. After isotropization one thus would have a quark-gluon plasma in chemical equilibrium.
Service de Physique Théorique, CEA/DSM/Saclay, Bâtiment 774, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
F
F
Gelis
K
K
Kajantie
T
T
Lappi