THERMAL AND CHEMICAL EQUILIBRATION IN A GLUON PLASMA

We show that the evolution of a gluon plasma towards equilibrium start ing at some early moment when the momentum distribution in the central region is momentarily isotropic. Using HIJING results for Au+Au colli sions as initial input, we consider thermalization and chemical equili bration simultaneously at both LHC and RHIC energies. Thermalization i s shown to be driven chiefly by inelastic processes in our scenario, c ontradicting the common assumption that this is the role of elastic pr ocesses. We argue that only the inelastic dominance depends on the ini tial conditions but not the dominance itself.