Temperature-dependent cross sections for charmonium dissociation in collisions with kaons and eta mesons in hadronic matter

TL;DR

This paper calculates temperature-dependent cross sections for charmonium dissociation by kaons and eta mesons using a quark-interchange model, revealing differences in their energy and temperature behaviors and implications for hadronic matter.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation of kaon-charmonium and eta-charmonium dissociation cross sections with temperature dependence, highlighting differences despite similar meson masses.

Findings

Cross sections vary with temperature and energy, influenced by quark wave functions and meson masses.

Eta-charmonium dissociation behaves differently from kaon-charmonium despite similar meson masses.

Dissociation rates for eta and pion are comparable at low J/psi momenta.

Abstract

We study kaon-charmonium and eta-charmonium dissociation reactions. The K-charmonium dissociation and the eta-charmonium dissociation include 27 reactions. Cross sections for the reactions are calculated in the Born approximation, in the quark-interchange mechanism and with a temperature-dependent quark potential. The temperature dependence of peak cross sections of endothermic reactions is linked to the temperature dependence of quark-antiquark relative-motion wave functions, meson masses and the quark potential. Although the eta meson and kaon have similar masses, the energy and temperature dependence of the eta-charmonium dissociation cross sections are quite different from those of the K-charmonium dissociation cross sections. Using the eta-charmonium and pion-charmonium dissociation cross sections, we calculate the ratio of the corresponding dissociation rates in hadronic matter and we find that such rates are comparable at low J/psi momenta.