Mott dissociation of D-mesons at the chiral phase transition and anomalous J/Psi suppression

TL;DR

This paper studies how the Mott transition affects D-meson dissociation and J/psi suppression during the QCD phase transition, providing a model for in-medium modifications relevant to heavy-ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a model explaining threshold effects in charmonium breakup processes as a Mott transition at the chiral phase transition, linking microscopic changes to experimental observations.

Findings

Threshold effects in breakup cross sections are explained by the Mott transition.

The model accounts for anomalous J/psi suppression observed in experiments.

Final state quark-antiquark states enter the continuum at the phase transition.

Abstract

We investigate the in-medium modification of the charmonium breakup processes due to the Mott-effect for D-mesons at the chiral phase transition. A model calculation for the process J/Psi+pi --> D+D^*+ h.c. is presented which demonstrates that threshold effects in the thermal averaged breakup cross section can be explained as a Mott transition where final state quark-antiquark bound states enter the continuum of resonant states at the QCD phase transition. Applications to heavy-ion collisions within a modified Glauber model scenario and the phenomenon of anomalous J/$\psi$ suppression in the CERN NA50 experiment are addressed.