J/psi Transverse Momentum Distribution in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

Understand

The transverse momentum (pt) dependence of J/psi production in heavy ion collisions is investigated in a transport model with both initial production and continuous regeneration of charmonia.

• The competition between the two production mechanisms results in a pt suppression in central collisions, the gluon multi-scattering in the initial stage leads to a high pt enhancement, and the regeneration populates J/psis at low pt region and induces a minimum in R_AA(pt).
• These three phenomena are indeed observed in both 200 GeV Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at RHIC energy.