Mott Effect and J/Psi Dissociation at the Quark-Hadron Phase Transition

We investigate the in-medium modification of pseudoscalar and vector mesons in a QCD motivated chiral quark model by solving the Dyson-Schwinger equations for quarks and mesons at finite temperature for a wide mass range of meson masses, from light (pi, rho) to open-charm (D, D*) states. At the chiral / deconfinement phase transition, the quark-antiquark bound states enter the continuum of unbound states and become broad resonances (the hadronic Mott effect). We calculate the in-medium cross sections for charmonium dissociation due to collisions with light hadrons in a chiral Lagrangian approach, and show that the D and D* meson spectral broadening lowers the threshold for charmonium dissociation by pi and rho meson impact. This leads to a step-like enhancement in the reaction rate. We suggest that this mechanism for enhanced charmonium dissociation may be the physical mechanism underlying the anomalous J/Psi suppression observed by NA50.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, uses EPJ style (included), contribution to the Proceedings of the International Conference on Quark Nuclear Physics, June 9 - 14, 2002, Juelich, Germany; 1 figure added, text adde

Color mixing in high-energy hadron collisions

The color mixing of mesons propagating in a nucleus is studied with the help of a color-octet Pomeron partner present in the two-gluon model of the Pomeron. For a simple model with four meson-nucleon channels, color mixings are found to be absent for pointlike mesons and very small for small mesons. These results seem to validate the absorption model with two independent color components used in recent analyses of the nuclear absorption of $J/\psi$ mesons produced in nuclear reactions.Comment: 3 journal-style page

Quark-Gluon Plasma: Status of Heavy Ion Physics

Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD), defined on a discrete space time lattice, leads to a spectacular non-perturbative prediction of a new state of matter, called quark-gluon plasma (QGP), at sufficiently high temperatures or equivalently large energy densities. The experimental programs of CERN, Geneva and BNL, New York of relativistic heavy ion collisions are expected to produce such energy densities, thereby providing us a chance to test the above prediction. After a brief introduction of the necessary theoretical concepts, I will present a critical review of the experimental results already obtained by the various experiments in order to examine whether QGP has already been observed by them.Comment: 11 Pages, LaTeX, Plenary talk given at 6th Workshop in High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP 6), Chennai (Madras), India, 3-15 Jan 2000 To appear in Pramana, Journal of Physic

J/Psi suppression in colliding nuclei: statistical model analysis

We consider the $J/\Psi$ suppression at a high energy heavy ion collision. An ideal gas of massive hadrons in thermal and chemical equilibrium is formed in the central region. The finite-size gas expands longitudinally in accordance with Bjorken law. The transverse expansion in a form of the rarefaction wave is taken into account. We show that $J/\Psi$ suppression in such an environment, when combined with the disintegration in nuclear matter, gives correct evaluation of NA38 and NA50 data in a broad range of initial energy densities.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

J/\Psi production, χ\chi polarization and Color Fluctuations

The hard contributions to the heavy quarkonium-nucleon cross sections are calculated based on the QCD factorization theorem and the nonrelativistic quarkonium model. We evaluate the nonperturbative part of these cross sections which dominates at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}\approx 20$ GeV at the Cern Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and becomes a correction at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}\approx 6$ TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). \J production at the CERN SPS is well described by hard QCD, when the larger absorption cross sections of the $\chi$ states predicted by QCD are taken into account. We predict an $A$-dependent polarization of the $\chi$ states. The expansion of small wave packets is discussed.Comment: 13 pages REVTEX, 1 table, 2 PostScript, corrected some typo

Quark exchange model for charmonium dissociation in hot hadronic matter

A diagrammatic approach to quark exchange processes in meson-meson scattering is applied to the case of inelastic reactions of the type (Q\barQ)+(q\barq)\rightarrow (Q\barq) + (q\barQ), where $Q$ and $q$ refer to heavy and light quarks, respectively. This string-flip process is discussed as a microscopic mechanism for charmonium dissociation (absorption) in hadronic matter. The cross section for the reaction $J/\psi + \pi \to D+ \bar D$ is calculated using a potential model, which is fitted to the meson mass spectrum. The temperature dependence of the relaxation time for the \J/Psi distribution in a homogeneous thermal pion gas is obtained. The use of charmonium for the diagnostics of the state of hot hadronic matter produced in ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 3 tables, 7 figure

Charmonium suppression from purely geometrical effects

The extend to which geometrical effects contribute to the production and suppression of the $J/\psi$ and $q\bar{q}$ minijet pairs in general is investigated for high energy heavy ion collisions at SPS, RHIC and LHC energies. For the energy range under investigation, the geometrical effects referred to are shadowing and anti-shadowing, respectively. Due to those effects, the parton distributions in nuclei deviate from the naive extrapolation from the free nucleon result; $f_{A}\neq A f_{N}$. The strength of the shadowing/anti-shadowing effect increases with the mass number. The consequences of gluonic shadowing effects for the $x_F$ distribution of $J/\psi$'s at $\sqrt s =20$ GeV, $\sqrt s =200$ GeV and $\sqrt s =6$ TeV are calculated for some relevant combinations of nuclei, as well as the $p_T$ distribution of minijets at midrapidity for $N_f=4$ in the final state.Comment: corrected some typos, improved shadowing ratio

Phenomenology of Jet Quenching in Heavy Ion Collisions

We derive an analytical expression for the quenching factor in the strong quenching limit where the $p_T$ spectrum of hard partons is dominated by surface emission. We explore the phenomenological consequences of different scaling laws for the energy loss and calculate the additional suppression of the away-side jet.Comment: Substantially modified manuscrip

Evidence for Statistical Production of J/psi Mesons in Nuclear Collisions at 158--200 A GeV

The hypothesis of statistical production of J/psi mesons at hadronization is formulated and checked against experimental data. It explains in the natural way the observed scaling behavior of the J/psi to pion ratio at the CERN SPS energies. Using the multiplicities of J/psi and eta mesons the hadronization temperature T_H = 175 MeV is found, which agrees with the previous estimates of the temperature parameter based on the analysis of the hadron yield systematics.Comment: revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Color-Octet Fraction in J/Psi Production and Absorption

The cross section between a $c \bar c$ pair and a nucleon is small and sensitive to the $c - \bar c$ separation if the pair is in a color-singlet state, but very large and insensitive to the separation if it is in a color-octet state. We use this property in an absorption model involving both color components to deduce the color structure of $c \bar c$ pairs produced in $p(B)A \to \psi X$ reactions. Our analysis shows that the NA3, NA38 and E772 data are not inconsistent with the theoretical picture that color-octet and color-singlet precursors are produced in roughly equal proportions if the produced color-singlet precursors are pointlike and transparent. However, if the color-singlet precursors are not transparent but have a cross section of a few mb, these data do show a definite preference for a larger fraction of color-singlet precursors. In either case, the color-octet fraction increases with $x_F$, approaching unity as $x_F$ becomes large.Comment: 9 pages, updated to include new result