Lindblad-driven quarkonium production in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum-mechanical framework based on the Lindblad equation to model quarkonium production, suppression, and recombination in heavy-ion collisions, providing a unified first-principles approach.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Lindblad equation-based model that simultaneously describes quarkonium suppression and recombination from fundamental principles.

Findings

Derived dissociation temperatures and decay widths for quarkonium states.

Computed survival probabilities during Bjorken expansion.

Extended the model to include recombination from thermalized quarks.

Abstract

We study the production of the conventional quarkonium states in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions using an open quantum system framework based on the Lindblad equation. Starting from the complex-valued in-medium potential, we derive the dissociation temperature and thermal decay width for each state, and compute their survival probabilities for a system undergoing Bjorken expansion. We then extend the framework to include recombination from thermalized charm and bottom quarks in the quark-gluon plasma, deriving a coalescence model for quarkonia from the Lindblad equation under the adiabatic approximation. The methodology provides a unified, first-principles-inspired description of suppression and recombination for both charmonium and bottomonium.