Charmonium propagation through a dense medium

Abstract

Attenuation of a colourless c̄c dipole propagating with a large momentum through a hot medium originates from two sources, Debye screening (melting), and inelastic collisions with surrounding scattering centres (absorption). The former never terminates completely production of a bound charmonium in heavy ion collisions, even at very high temperatures. The latter, is controlled my the magnitude of the dipole cross section, related to the transport coefficient, which is the rate of transverse momentum broadening in the medium. A novel procedure of Lorentz boosting of the Schrödinger equation is developed, which allows to calculate the charmonium survival probability employing the path-integral technique, incorporating both melting and absorption. A novel mechanism of charmonium regeneration in a dense medium is proposed.