# Extraction of the Heavy-Quark Potential from Bottomonium Observables in Heavy-Ion Collisions

## TL;DR

This paper extracts the in-medium heavy-quark potential from bottomonium data in heavy-ion collisions, revealing a strongly coupled potential with residual confining effects in the quark-gluon plasma.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel method combining quarkonium transport and open heavy-flavor insights to determine the in-medium potential from experimental data.

## Key findings

- The potential shows strong coupling with residual confining forces.
- Systematic fits to data yield a temperature-dependent potential.
- Nonperturbative effects significantly influence the dissociation rate.

## Abstract

The in-medium color potential is a fundamental quantity for understanding the properties of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP). Open and hidden heavy-flavor (HF) production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions (URHICs) has been found to be a sensitive probe of this potential. Here we utilize a previously developed quarkonium transport approach in combination with insights from open HF diffusion to extract the color-singlet potential from experimental results on $\Upsilon$ production in URHICs. Starting from a parameterized trial potential, we evaluate the $\Upsilon$ transport parameters and conduct systematic fits to available data for the centrality dependence of ground and excited states at RHIC and the LHC. The best fits and their statistical significance are converted into a temperature-dependent potential. Including nonperturbative effects in the dissociation rate guided from open HF phenomenology, we extract a rather strongly coupled potential with substantial remnants of the long-range confining force in the QGP.