PLASMA THERMALIZATION

We have studied thermalization of optically thick pair plasma with baryon loading by particle collisions and followed the evolution of distribution functions starting far from equilibrium configuration. With this goal we solved numerically relativistic Boltzmann equations with collisional integrals given by QED matrix elements for the corresponding processes. We computed the relevant timescales of reaching kinetic and thermal equilibria as functions of plasma total energy density and baryon loading parameter.