The Color Glass Condensate to the Strongly Interacting Quark Gluon Plasma: Theoretical Developments

Abstract

I argue that the physics of the scattering of very high energy strongly interacting particles is controlled by a new, universal form of matter, the Color Glass Condensate. This matter is the dominant contribution to the low x part of a hadron wavefunction. In collisions, this mater almost instantaneously turns into a Glasma. The Glasma initially has strong longitudinal color electric and magnetic fields, with topological charge. These fields melt into gluons. Due to instabilities, quantum noise is converted into classical turbulence, which may be responsible for the early thermalization seen in heavy ion at RHIC