Coupled Transport Equations for Quarkonium Production in Heavy Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper develops coupled Boltzmann equations within the open quantum system framework to model quarkonium transport in quark-gluon plasma, highlighting the significance of correlated recombination in heavy ion collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel set of coupled transport equations that incorporate correlations between heavy quark pairs and quarkonia, advancing the understanding of quarkonium dynamics in plasma.

Findings

Correlated recombination is essential for matching bottomonia suppression data.

Proposes a new observable ratio to test the role of correlated recombination.

Future measurements can distinguish models with or without correlation effects.

Abstract

Motivated by recent applications of the open quantum system formalism to understand quarkonium transport in the quark-gluon plasma, we develop a set of coupled Boltzmann equations for open heavy quark-antiquark pairs and quarkonia. Our approach keeps track of the correlation between the heavy quark-antiquark pair from quarkonium dissociation and thus is able to account for both uncorrelated and correlated recombination. By solving the coupled Boltzmann equations for current heavy ion collision experiments, we find correlated recombination is crucial to describe the data of bottomonia nuclear modification factors. To further test the importance of correlated recombination in experiments, we propose a new observable: $\frac{R_{AA}[\chi_b(1P)]}{R_{AA}[\Upsilon(2S)]}$. Future measurements of this ratio will help distinguish calculations with and without correlated recombination.