590 research outputs found
Scanning the Quark-Gluon Plasma with Charmonium
We suggest the variation of charmonium suppression with Feynman x_F in heavy
ion collisions as a novel and sensitive probe for the properties of the matter
created in such reactions. In contrast to the proton-nucleus case where nuclear
suppression is weakest at small x_F, final state interactions with the comoving
matter create a minimum at x_F=0, which is especially deep and narrow if a
quark-gluon plasma is formed. While a particularly strong effect is predicted
at SPS, at the higher RHIC energy it overlaps with the expected sharp variation
with x_F of nuclear effects and needs comparison with proton-nucleus data. If
thermal enhancement of J/\Psi production takes over at the energies of RHIC and
LHC, it will form an easily identified peak, rather than dip in x_F dependence.
We predict a steep dependence on centrality and suggest that this new probe is
complementary to the dependence on transverse energy, and is more sensitive to
a scenario of final state interactions.Comment: 5 pages including 3 figures. Stylistic and clarifying corrections are
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