Charmonium in medium: From correlators to experiment

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Date

2010

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

American Physical Society

Abstract

We set up a framework in which in-medium charmonium properties are constrained by thermal lattice quantum chromodynamics and subsequently implemented into a thermal rate equation enabling the comparison with experimental data in heavy-ion collisions. Specifically, we evaluate phenomenological consequences for charmonium production originating from two different scenarios in which either the free or the internal energy are identified with the in-medium two-body potential between charm and anticharm quarks. These two scenarios represent J/psi " melting temperatures" of approximately 1.25T(c) ("weak binding") and 2T(c) (" strong binding"), respectively. Within current uncertainties in dissociation rates and charm-quark momentum spectra, both scenarios can reproduce the centrality dependence of inclusive J/psi yields in nuclear collisions at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) reasonably well. However, the "strong-binding" scenario associated with the internal energy as the potential tends to better reproduce current data on transverse momentum spectra at both SPS and RHIC.

Description

Journals published by the American Physical Society can be found at http://publish.aps.org/

Keywords

HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS, PB-PB COLLISIONS, QUARK-GLUON PLASMA, J/PSI, SUPPRESSION, NUCLEUS COLLISIONS, FINITE-TEMPERATURE, FIXED-TARGET, COALESCENCE, STATES, SPS, Physics

Citation

Xingbo Zhao and Ralf Rapp. Phys.Rev.C 82 064905 2010. "Copyright (2010) by the American Physical Society."