Heavy quarkonium production and propagation in nuclei

Conference · Wed Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1997

OSTI ID:563297

Wong, C Y ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States). Physics Div.

In the search for the quark-gluon plasma, it has been suggested that the production of charmonium will be suppressed in a quark-gluon plasma because of the screening of the interaction between c and {anti c}. To extract information on the suppression due to the quark-gluon plasma, it is necessary to study the suppression of J/{psi} production by sources different from the quark-gluon plasma. It is therefore useful to examine the mechanism of heavy quarkonium production and its propagation in nuclei. The authors describe a precursor in heavy quarkonium production in terms of a coherent admixture of states of different color, spin, and angular momentum quantum numbers, and obtain the production amplitudes for different quarkonium bound states by projecting out this precursor state onto these bound states. The precursor is absorbed in its passage through a nucleus in a pA reaction, and the total cross section between this precursor with a nucleon can be calculated with the two-gluon model of the Pomeron. Such a description of coherent precursors and their subsequent interactions with nucleons can explain many salient features of J/{psi} and {psi}{prime} production in pA collisions.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-96OR22464
• OSTI ID: 563297
• Report Number(s): ORNL/CP--95285; CONF-9708133--; ON: DE98001423; BR: KB0300000
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
ABSORPTION
BOUND STATE
CHARMONIUM
COHERENT PRODUCTION
NUCLEAR MATTER
NUCLEON-NUCLEON INTERACTIONS
PARTICLE MODELS
POMERANCHUK PARTICLES
PRECURSOR
PROTON REACTIONS
QUARK MATTER