Recently, a lot of effort has been put into describing the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma using the gauge/gravity duality. In this context, we here present a full numerical solution of the early far-from-equilibrium formation of the plasma, which is expanding radially in the transverse plane and is boost invariant along the collision axis. This can model the early stage of a head-on relativistic heavy ion collision. The resulting momentum distribution quickly reaches local equilibrium, after which it can be evolved using ordinary hydrodynamics. We comment on general implications for these hydrodynamic simulations, both for central and noncentral collisions, and including fluctuations in the initial state.

• Received 21 November 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.87.061901