Dissociation of Heavy Quarkonia in the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Cheuk-Yin Wong

Published 2001-12-21, updated 2002-05-27Version 4

Using a temperature-dependent potential obtained from lattice gauge calculations, we study the stability of heavy quarkonia in the quark-gluon plasma. We find that only the Upsilon(1S) and the eta_b(1S) are bound in the quark-gluon plasma, and have a small binding energy. The quark-gluon plasma may be revealed by an Upsilon(1S) dilepton peak with an invariant mass close to twice the current b quark mass, which is lower than the Upsilon(1S) mass in free space. The quarkonia Upsilon(1S) and eta_b(1S) can dissociate by collision with quarks and gluons in the quark-gluon plasma. We evaluate the dissociation cross section of the Upsilon(1S) due to gluon absorption. The Upsilon(1S) and the eta_b(1S) can also dissociate spontaneously at temperatures above the dissociation temperature 1.11T_c, where T_c is the quark-gluon plasma phase transition temperature. At temperatures slightly above the dissociation temperature these states appear as resonances, which provides another signature for the quark-gluon plasma.