Initial conditions and global event properties from color glass condensate

Perturbative unitarization from non-linear effects is thought to deplete the gluon density for transverse momenta below the saturation scale. Such effects also modify the distribution of gluons produced in heavy-ion collisions in transverse impact parameter space. I discuss some of the consequences for the initial conditions for hydrodynamic models of heavy-ion collisions and for hard “tomographic” probes. Also, I stress the importance of realistic modelling of the fluctuations of the valence sources for the small-x fields in the impact parameter plane. Such models can now be combined with solutions of running–coupling Balitsky–Kovchegov evolution to obtain controlled predictions for initial conditions at the LHC.