Quarkonia in the Quark Gluon Plasma

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent theoretical and lattice QCD advances in understanding how quarkonia behave and melt in the quark-gluon plasma, with implications for heavy ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It synthesizes recent lattice results and theoretical models on quarkonium melting and suppression mechanisms in the quark-gluon plasma.

Findings

Lattice results on the heavy quark potential indicate color-screening effects.

Spectral function analyses reveal the melting behavior of quarkonia at high temperatures.

Emergence of a complex-valued potential in high-temperature QCD impacts quarkonium stability.

Abstract

In this paper we review recent progress towards understanding the nature of quarkonia in the quark-gluon plasma. We review the theory necessary to understand the melting of bound states due to color-screening, including lattice results for the heavy quark potential, lattice results on the correlation functions related to the relevant spectral functions, and the emergence of a complex-valued potential in high-temperature quantum chromodynamics. We close with a brief survey of phenomenological models of quarkonium suppression in relativistic heavy ion collisions.