University of Milan-Bicocca - (U2-02)
Title: NLO thermalisation in weakly-coupled QCD
Abstract: The question how non-abelian gauge fields pushed far from equilibrium relax back towards equilibrium is an important question in the context of heavy-ion collisions, where the microscopic mechanism responsible for the rapid onset of a hydrodynamical, near-equilibrated medium is actively investigated. In this talk I will discuss how thermalisation can be investigated from a weakly-coupled kinetic theory, concentrating in particular on so-called bottom-up scenario, which I will briefly review. I will then show how the kinetic description can be extended beyond leading order in the QCD coupling, owing to recent theoretical developments in the understanding of light-like separated thermal amplitudes. I will then show the results from the numerical implementation of this NLO collision operator and I will discuss the impact NLO corrections have on the stability of the relevant observables, such as the thermalisation time, as a function of the coupling.