Far-from-equilibrium attractors with full relativistic Boltzmann approach in boost-invariant and non-boost-invariant systems

Abstract We study the universal behavior associated with a Relativistic Boltzmann Transport (RBT) approach with the full collision integral in 0+1D conformal systems. We show that all momentum moments of the distribution function exhibit universal behavior. Furthermore, the RBT approach allows to calculate the full distribution function, showing that an attractor behavior is present in both the longitudinal and transverse momentum dependence. We compare our results to the far-from-equilibrium attractors determined with other approaches, such as kinetic theory in Relaxation Time Approximation (RTA) and relativistic hydrodynamic theories, both in their viscous (DNMR) an anisotropic (aHydro) formulations, finding a very similar evolution, but an even faster thermalization in RBT for higher order moments. For the first time, we extended this analysis also to study the attractor behavior under a temperature-dependent viscosity $$\eta /s(T)$$ η / s ( T ) , accounting also for the rapid increase toward the hadronic phase. We find that a partial breaking of the scaling behavior with respect to $$\tau /\tau _{eq}$$ τ / τ eq emerges only at $$T \approx T_c$$ T ≈ T c generating a transient deviation from attractors; interestingly this in realistic finite systems may occur around the freeze-out dynamics. Finally, we investigate for the first time results beyond the boost-invariant picture, finding that also in such a case the system evolves toward the universal attractor. In particular, we present the forward and pull-back attractors at different space-time rapidities including rapidity regions where initially the distribution function is even vanishing.