Fluctuations of the transverse energy in Pb+Pb collisions and J/psi suppression

TL;DR

This paper investigates how fluctuations in transverse energy affect J/psi suppression in Pb+Pb collisions, proposing a formalism to accurately model these effects beyond ad hoc adjustments.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism to calculate the impact of E_T fluctuations on J/psi suppression, extending existing models with a systematic approach.

Findings

Fluctuations in E_T significantly influence J/psi suppression patterns.

The proposed formalism provides a more accurate description of suppression data.

Conditions for deriving the ad hoc factor are clarified.

Abstract

The observed J/psi suppression in Pb+Pb collisions shows a drop at those large values of the transverse energy E_T which arise from fluctuations. The validity of existing models for J/psi suppression can be extended into this domain of E_T by introducing an ad hoc factor proportional to E_T. We propose a formalism in which the influence of E_T fluctuations on the J/psi suppression can be calculated and discuss the conditions under which the ad hoc factor is obtained.