Bottomonium Properties in QGP from a Lattice-QCD Informed T-Matrix Approach

TL;DR

This paper uses a lattice-QCD informed T-matrix approach to analyze bottomonium properties in quark-gluon plasma, providing insights into bound state survival, spectral functions, and transport coefficients in a strongly coupled regime.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative T-matrix framework incorporating 3-body effects to interpret lattice QCD data on bottomonium in QGP, refining potential models and analyzing bound state dissociation.

Findings

Minor potential refinements improve lattice data description.

Stronger interference effects are needed at larger quark separations.

Bound states dissolve at specific temperatures, matching spectral peaks.

Abstract

Recent lattice quantum chromodynamics (lQCD) computations of bottomonium correlation functions with extended sources provide new insights into heavy-quark dynamics at distance scales which are of the order of the inverse temperature. We analyze these results employing the thermodynamic T-matrix approach, in a continued effort to interpret lQCD data for quarkonium correlation functions in a non-perturbative framework suitable for strongly coupled systems. Its key inputs are the in-medium driving kernel (potential) of the scattering equation and an interference function which implements 3-body effects in the quarkonium coupling to the thermal medium. A simultaneous description of lQCD results for the bottomonium correlators with extended operators and the previously analyzed Wilson line correlators only requires minor refinements of the potential but calls for stronger interference effects at larger separation of the bottom quark and antiquark. We then analyze the poles of the self-consistent T-matrices on the real axis to assess the survival of the various bound states. We estimate the pertinent temperatures where the poles disappear for the various bottomonium states and discuss the relation to the corresponding peaks in the bottomonium spectral functions. We also recalculate the spatial diffusion coefficient of the QGP and find it to be similar to that in our previous study.