Charmonium chemistry in A+A collisions at relativistic energies

E. L. Bratkovskaya, A. P. Kostyuk, W. Cassing, H. Stoecker

Published 2004-02-12, updated 2004-03-29Version 2

Charmonium production and suppression in heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies is investigated within different models, i.e. the comover absorption model, the threshold suppression model, the statistical coalescence model and the HSD transport approach. In HSD the charmonium dissociation cross sections with mesons are described by a simple phase-space parametrization including an effective coupling strength $|M_i|^2$ for the charmonium states $i=\chi_c, J/\psi, \psi^\prime$. This allows to include the backward channels for charmonium reproduction by $D \bar{D}$ channels -- which are missed in the comover absorption and threshold suppression model -- employing detailed balance without introducing any new parameters. It is found that all approaches yield a reasonable description of $J/\psi$ suppression in S+U and Pb+Pb collisions at SPS energies. However, they differ significantly in the $\psi^\prime/J/\psi$ ratio versus centrality at SPS and especially at RHIC energies. These pronounced differences can be exploited in future measurements at RHIC to distinguish the hadronic rescattering scenarios from quark coalescence close to the QGP phase boundary.