Bottomonium suppression and elliptic flow in an anisotropic quark-gluon plasma using the quantum trajectories method

TL;DR

This paper models bottomonium suppression and elliptic flow in an anisotropic quark-gluon plasma using the quantum trajectories method, successfully matching experimental data and highlighting the importance of medium anisotropy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining anisotropic complex potentials with quantum trajectories to study bottomonium dynamics in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Reproduces sequential suppression pattern of bottomonium states.

Predicts non-zero elliptic flow consistent with experimental data.

Shows medium anisotropy significantly affects quarkonium observables.

Abstract

We study bottomonium dynamics in a momentum-space anisotropic quark-gluon plasma (QGP) using the quantum trajectories (QTraj) framework. The real part of the heavy-quark potential is obtained from a minimal extension of the Karsch-Mehr-Satz (KMS) potential, while the angle-averaged imaginary part is derived to leading order in the anisotropy parameter $\xi$ and modeled to interpolate smoothly between the small- and large -$\xi$ regimes. The resulting anisotropic complex potential is used to solve the real-time Schr\"odinger equation using QTraj for the evolution of bottomonium in heavy-ion collisions. Nuclear modification factors $R_{AA}$, double ratios, and elliptic flow coefficients $v_2$ for the $\Upsilon(1S)$, $\Upsilon(2S)$, and $\Upsilon(3S)$ states are computed, including feed-down contributions, in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02 \, \text{TeV}$. The QTraj-Aniso predictions successfully reproduce the observed sequential suppression pattern and non-zero elliptic flow, showing good agreement with experimental measurements from the ALICE, ATLAS, and CMS collaborations and demonstrating the relevance of path-length dependent suppression and medium anisotropy in quarkonium phenomenology.