Non-equilibrium charmonium regeneration in strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma

The evaluation of quarkonium regeneration in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions (URHICs) requires the knowledge of the heavy-quark phase space distributions in the expanding quark-gluon plasma (QGP) fireball. We employ a semi-classical charmonium transport approach where regeneration processes e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xiaojian Du, Ralf Rapp
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2022-11-01
Series:Physics Letters B
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269322005482
Description
Summary:The evaluation of quarkonium regeneration in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions (URHICs) requires the knowledge of the heavy-quark phase space distributions in the expanding quark-gluon plasma (QGP) fireball. We employ a semi-classical charmonium transport approach where regeneration processes explicitly account for the time-dependent spectra of charm quarks via Langevin simulations of their diffusion. The inelastic charmonium rates and charm-quark transport coefficients are computed from the same charm-medium interaction. The latter is modeled by perturbative rates, augmented with a K-factor to represent nonperturbative interaction strength and interference effect. Using central 5.02 TeV Pb-Pb collisions as a test case we find that a good description of the measured J/ψ yield and its transverse-momentum dependence can be achieved if a large K≳5 is employed while smaller values lead to marked discrepancies. This is in line with open-charm phenomenology in URHICs, where nonperturbative interactions of similar strength are required. Our approach establishes a common transport framework for a microscopic description of open and hidden heavy-flavor (HF) observables that incorporates both nonperturbative and non-equilibrium effects, and thus enhances the mutual constraints from experiment on the extraction of transport properties of the QGP.
ISSN:0370-2693