Heavy Quark Interactions and Quarkonium Binding

TL;DR

This paper investigates heavy quark interactions near the deconfinement transition in lattice QCD, revealing increased binding that affects quarkonium stability and flow at high temperatures.

Contribution

It provides new insights into in-medium heavy quark interactions and binding behavior above the deconfinement temperature using lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

Enhanced binding of heavy quark pairs above $T_c$

Similar distance dependence for $Q\bar Q$ and $QQ$ interactions

Potential for $J/\Psi$ survival and flow at high temperatures

Abstract

We consider heavy quark interactions in quenched and unquenched lattice QCD. In a region just above the deconfinement point, non-Abelian gluon polarization leads to a strong increase in the binding. Comparing quark-antiquark and quark-quark interaction, the dependence of the binding on the separation distance $r$ is found to be the same for the colorless singlet $Q\bar Q$ and the colored anti-triplet $QQ$ state. In a potential model description of in-medium $J/\Psi$ behavior, this enhancement of the binding leads to a survival up to temperatures of 1.5 $T_c$ or higher; it could also result in $J/\Psi$ flow.