Dissociation of quarkonium in an anisotropic hot QCD medium

TL;DR

This study examines how anisotropic hot QCD media affect quarkonium states, revealing reduced screening and increased binding in certain directions compared to isotropic media, with potential implications for understanding quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It introduces a full Cornell potential correction using a dielectric function from the hard-loop gluon propagator, highlighting anisotropic effects on quarkonium binding.

Findings

Less screening in anisotropic medium compared to isotropic.

Potential remains Coulomb-like at short distances.

Anisotropy causes angular dependence, strengthening binding along certain directions.

Abstract

We have investigated the properties of quarkonium states in an anisotropic hot QCD medium by correcting the full Cornell potential, not the Coulomb term alone as usually done in the literature, with a dielectric function from the hard-loop resummed gluon propagator. We have found that in-medium modification in anisotropic medium causes less screening than in isotropic medium. In the short distance limit, potential does not show any medium dependence whereas in the long-distance limit, it reduces to the Coulomb potential with a dynamically screened color charge. In addition, anisotropy in momentum space introduces a characteristic angular dependence in the potential and as a result, quarkonium states in anisotropic medium are more tightly bound than in isotropic medium. In particular, quark pairs aligned in the direction of anisotropy are more bound than perpendicular to the direction of anisotropy.