# Bottomonium transport in a strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma

## TL;DR

This paper develops a semiclassical transport model combining nonperturbative reaction rates and hydrodynamic evolution to study bottomonium suppression and regeneration in quark-gluon plasma, aligning with LHC data.

## Contribution

It introduces a nonperturbative, lattice-constrained transport approach that integrates reaction rates with hydrodynamics for bottomonium in heavy-ion collisions.

## Key findings

- Enhanced dissociation and regeneration rates compared to previous models.
- The approach describes centrality dependence of bottomonium yields at LHC energies.
- Discrepancies observed at large transverse momenta.

## Abstract

Quarkonium production in high-energy heavy-ion collisions remains a key probe of the quark-gluon plasma formed in these reactions, but the development of a fully integrated nonperturbative approach remains a challenge. Toward this end, we set up a semiclassical transport approach that combines nonperturbative reaction rates rooted in lattice-constrained $T$-matrix interactions with a viscous hydrodynamic medium evolution. Bottomonium suppression is computed along trajectories in the hydrodynamic evolution while regeneration is evaluated via a rate equation extended to a medium with spatial gradients. The much larger reaction rates compared to previous calculations markedly enhance both dissociation and regeneration processes. This, in particular, requires a reliable assessment of bottomonium equilibrium limits and of the non-thermal distributions of the bottom quarks transported through the expanding medium. Within current uncertainties our approach can describe the centrality dependence of bottomonium yields measured in Pb-Pb ($\sqrt{s_{_{\rm NN}}}$=5.02\,TeV) collisions at the LHC, while discrepancies are found at large transverse momenta.