The Imaginary Potential of Heavy Quarkonia Moving in Strongly Coupled Plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the imaginary part of the potential affecting heavy quarkonia in a strongly coupled plasma varies with their velocity, showing that moving quarkonia are more prone to dissociation.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of the velocity dependence of the imaginary potential and thermal width for moving heavy quarkonia in strongly coupled plasma.

Findings

Imaginary potential increases with quarkonium velocity.

Moving quarkonia have larger thermal widths than static ones.

Velocity and orientation affect quarkonium dissociation in plasma.

Abstract

The melting of a heavy quark-antiquark bound state depends on the screening phenomena associated with the binding energy, as well as scattering phenomena associated with the imaginary part of the potential. We study the imaginary part of the static potential of heavy quarkonia moving in the strongly coupled plasma. The imaginary potential dependence on the velocity of the traveling bound states is calculated. Non-zero velocity leads to increase of the absolute value of the imaginary potential. The enhancement is stronger when the quarkonia move orthogonal to the quark-gluon plasma maximizing the flux between the pair. Moreover, we estimate the thermal width of the moving bound state and find it enhanced compared to the static one. Our results imply that the moving quarkonia dissociate easier than the static ones in agreement with the expectations.