Can quarkonia survive deconfinement ?

TL;DR

This study uses potential models and lattice-based potentials to analyze quarkonium behavior at finite temperatures, revealing most states dissolve below 1.5 times the critical temperature, challenging recent findings.

Contribution

It demonstrates that potential models with lattice-informed screening potentials can accurately describe quarkonium spectral functions at finite temperature, contradicting some recent results.

Findings

Most quarkonium states dissolve below 1.5T_c.

The model reproduces lattice correlation functions.

High-temperature spectral functions are enhanced even without resonances.

Abstract

We study quarkonium correlators and spectral functions at zero and finite temperature in QCD with only heavy quarks using potential models combined with perturbative QCD. First, we show that this approach can describe the quarkonium correlation function at zero temperature. Using a class of screened potentials based on lattice calculations of the static quark-antiquark free energy we calculate spectral functions at finite temperature. We find that all quarkonium states, with the exception of the $1S$ bottomonium, dissolve in the deconfined phase at temperatures smaller than $1.5T_c$, in contradiction with the conclusions of recent studies. Despite this the temperature dependence of the quarkonium correlation functions calculated on the lattice is well reproduced in our model. We also find that even in the absence of resonances the spectral function at high temperatures is significantly enhanced over the spectral function corresponding to free quark antiquark propagation.