Bottomonia in the Quark-Gluon Plasma and their Production at RHIC and LHC

TL;DR

This paper models bottomonium production in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC, incorporating suppression and regeneration mechanisms, and compares predictions with experimental data to understand quark-gluon plasma properties.

Contribution

It updates previous bottomonium suppression models by integrating lattice-QCD spectral functions, refined initial conditions, and experimental observables, emphasizing strong binding and regeneration effects.

Findings

Preference for strong $psilon$ binding in QGP

Significant bottomonium regeneration at LHC

Model aligns with STAR and CMS measurements

Abstract

We study the production of bottomonium states in heavy-ion reactions at collider energies available at RHIC and LHC. We employ an earlier constructed rate equation approach which accounts for both suppression and regeneration mechanisms in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and hadronization phases of the evolving thermal medium. Our previous predictions utilizing two limiting cases of strong and weak bottomonium binding in the QGP are updated by (i) checking the compatibility of the pertinent spectral functions with lattice-QCD results for euclidean correlators, (ii) adapting the initial conditions of the rate equation by updating bottom-related input cross sections and the charged-particle multiplicity of the fireball, and (iii) converting our calculations into observables as recently measured by the STAR and CMS experiments. Our main findings are a preference for strong $\Upsilon$ binding as well as a significant regeneration component at the LHC.