Thermal and chemical equilibration in a gluon plasma

Abstract We show that the evolution of a gluon plasma towards equilibrium starting at some early moment when the momentum distribution in the central region is momentarily isotropic. Using HIJING results for Au + Au collision as initial input, we consider thermalization and chemical equilibration simultaneously at both LHC and RHIC energies. Thermalization is shown to be driven chiefly by inelastic processes in our scenario, contradicting the common assumption that this is the role of elastic processes. We argue that only the inelastic dominance depends on the initial conditions but not the dominance itself.