TNT Colloquium: Exploring the early stages of high-energy heavy-ion collisions [Duke Virtual]

Over the past decades experiments at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered the formation of a de-confined Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), and established a standard picture of the space-time evolution of the QGP based on relativistic viscous hydrodynamics. While high-energy heavy-Ion collisions thus provide a unique laboratory to study QCD matter under extreme conditions, it has proven challenging to understand how the far-from equilibrium matter created in the collision turns into a nearly equilibrated plasma of quarks and gluons. In this talk I will highlight recent theoretical progress in understanding the question how an almost equilibrated Quark-Gluon plasma is created during the early stages of high-energy collisions and how the early time out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the QGP can be explored in more detail in future experiments at RHIC and LHC.