Application of Effective Field Theory in Nuclear Physics

Understand

The production of heavy quarkonium in heavy ion collisions has been used as an important probe of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP).

• Due to the plasma screening effect, the color attraction between the heavy quark antiquark pair inside a quarkonium is significantly suppressed at high temperature and thus no bound states can exist, i.e., they "melt".
• In addition, a bound heavy quark antiquark pair can dissociate if enough energy is transferred to it in a dynamical process inside the plasma.
• So one would expect the production of quarkonium to be considerably suppressed in heavy ion collisions.