Charmonium dissociation and recombination at RHIC and LHC

TL;DR

This paper models charmonium production at heavy-ion colliders, incorporating recombination effects and nuclear interactions, successfully explaining RHIC data and providing predictions for LHC energies.

Contribution

It extends the comovers interaction model to include secondary J/psi production via recombination with no free parameters, enhancing its predictive power.

Findings

Model accurately describes RHIC data for Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions.

Recombination effects are significant at high energies.

Predictions for LHC show expected charmonium yields.

Abstract

Charmonium production at heavy-ion colliders is considered within the comovers interaction model. The formalism is extended by including possible secondary J/psi production through recombination and an estimate of recombination effects is made with no free parameters involved. The comovers interaction model also includes a comprehensive treatment of initial-state nuclear effects, which are discussed in the context of such high energies. With these tools, the model properly describes the centrality and the rapidity dependence of experimental data at RHIC energy, $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV, for both Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions. Predictions for LHC, $\sqrt{s}$ = 5.5 TeV, are presented and the assumptions and extrapolations involved are discussed.