Speaker
Description
One of the central open questions in heavy-ion collisions is how the initially far-from-equilibrium plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons evolves toward local thermal equilibrium, a process known as hydrodynamization. Despite its importance, direct experimental signatures of this early pre-equilibrium stage remain elusive. Hard probes, such as jets, produced at very early times, offer a promising window into these dynamics. In this talk, I present results for the medium-induced gluon radiation from an energetic parton traversing the quark-gluon plasma, whose nonequilibrium time evolution is simulated within QCD kinetic theory. I show that the resulting radiation pattern deviates significantly from expectations based solely on thermal emission, providing new insights into the non-equilibrium nature of the medium. These differences can be linked to the underlying bottom-up equilibration process of the plasma, which consists of under- and overoccupied stages, and whose imprints are visible in the spectrum.