QCD based space-time description of heavy ion physics

The current understanding of the early stage of heavy ion collisions at collider energies on the basis of the improved parton model and kinetic theory is presented. The space-time evolution of these reactions is investigated in terms of the dissipative dynamics of (semi)hard quark and gluon interactions within perturbative QCD. The partons' phase-space distributions are evolved in real time according to a transport equation through multiple collisions, emission and absorption processes. The resulting parton cascade picture is applied to study the issues of thermalization, chemical equilibration, and particle production in AA collisions at RHIC and LHC. copyright 1995 American Institute of Physics