  At very high energies, the high parton densities (characterized by a
semi-hard saturation scale \Lambda_s) ensure that parton distributions can be
described by a classical effective field theory with remarkable properties
analogous to those of spin glass systems. This color glass condensate (CGC) of
gluons also provides the initial conditions for multi-particle production in
high energy nuclear collisions. In this talk, we briefly summarize recent
theoretical and phenomenological progress in the CGC approach to small x
physics. In particular, we discuss recent numerical work on the real time
gluodynamics of partons after a nuclear collision. The implications of this
work for the theoretical study of thermalization in nuclear collisions and on
the phenomenological interpretation of results of the recent RHIC experiments
are also discussed.
