Thermalization and Bose-Einstein Condensation in Overpopulated Glasma

We report recent progress on understanding the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma during the early stage in a heavy ion collision. The initially high overpopulation in the far-from-equilibrium gluonic matter ("Glasma") is shown to play a crucial role. The strongly interacting nature (and thus fast evolution) naturally arises as an emergent property of this pre-equilibrium matter where the intrinsic coupling is weak but the highly occupied gluon states coherently amplify the scattering. A possible transient Bose-Einstein Condensate is argued to form dynamically on a rather general ground. We develop a kinetic approach for describing its evolution toward thermalization as well as the onset of condensation.