Adiabatic Hydrodynamization: a Natural Framework to Find and Describe Prehydrodynamic Attractors

Abstract: The adiabatic hydrodynamization framework is a promising framework within which to describe and characterize pre-hydrodynamic attractors in a model-independent fashion. Using this framework, we define a procedure to identify a time-dependent change in coordinates which reveals a dynamical reduction in the number of active degrees of freedom. Applying this procedure to the kinetic theory of a Bjorken-expanding gas of gluons in the small angle elastic scattering limit, we are able to intuitively explain the self-similar evolution of the gluon distribution function long before the applicability of hydrodynamics, as well as the loss of memory of its initial condition.