Chemical equilibration of quarks and gluons at RHIC and LHC energies

We study chemical equilibration of quarks and gluons in central nuclear collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. The initial quark and gluon densities are taken from earlier studies as well as from recent perturbative QCD estimates and are then evolved via rate equations coupled to longitudinally boost-invariant fluid dynamics. We find that, for RHIC initial conditions, the lifetime of quark-gluon matter is too short in order for the quark and gluon number densities to chemically equilibrate prior to hadronization. In contrast, at LHC energies chemical equilibration is complete before the system hadronizes. Entropy production due to chemical equilibration can be as large as 30%. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.