Quarkonium above deconfinement as an open quantum system

TL;DR

This paper models quarkonium above deconfinement as an open quantum system, incorporating dissipation effects that influence lattice correlator calculations, providing new insights into quark-gluon plasma behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel open quantum system approach to quarkonium dynamics above deconfinement, including dissipation effects in the modeling.

Findings

Dissipation impacts Euclidean heavy-heavy correlators.

Numerical evaluation of the reduced density matrix is demonstrated.

Potential implications for interpreting lattice QCD results.

Abstract

Quarkonium at temperatures above deconfinement is modeled as an open quantum system, whose dynamics is determined not just by a potential energy and mass, but also by a drag coefficient which characterizes its interaction with the medium. The reduced density matrix for a heavy particle experiencing dissipative forces is expressed as an integral over paths in imaginary time and evaluated numerically. We demonstrate that dissipation could affect the Euclidean heavy-heavy correlators calculated in lattice simulations at temperatures just above deconfinement.