Indications of early thermalization in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

The directed flow of particles emitted from the fireball created in a heavy-ion collision is shown to be a very sensitive measure of the pressure equilibration in the first 1 fm/c of the evolution. Performing a (3 + 1)-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamic calculation with nonequilibrated longitudinal and transverse pressures, we show that the directed flow is strongly reduced if the pressure imbalance survives for even a short time. Transverse momentum spectra, elliptic flow, and interferometry correlation radii are not very sensitive to this early pressure anisotropy. Comparison with the data points toward a short equilibration time of the order of 0.25 fm/c or less.