From Complex to Stochastic Potential: Heavy Quarkonia in the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Understand

The in-medium physics of heavy quarkonium is an ideal proving ground for our ability to connect knowledge about the fundamental laws of physics to phenomenological predictions.

• One possible route to take is to attempt a description of heavy quark bound states at finite temperature through a Schroedinger equation with an instantaneous potential.
• Here we review recent progress in devising a comprehensive approach to define such a potential from first principles QCD and extract its, in general complex, values from non-perturbative lattice QCD simulations.
• Based on the theory of open quantum systems we will show how to interpret the role of the imaginary part in terms of spatial decoherence by introducing the concept of a stochastic potential.