We review the statistical hadronization picture for charmonium production in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions. Our starting point is a brief reminder of the status of the thermal model description of hadron production at high energy. Within this framework an excellent account is achieved of all data for hadrons built of (u,d,s) valence quarks using temperature, baryo-chemical potential and volume as thermal parameters. The large charm quark mass brings in a new (non-thermal) scale which is explicitely taken into account by fixing the total number of charm quarks produced in the collision. Emphasis is placed on the description of the physical basis for the resulting statistical hadronization model. We discuss the evidence for statistical hadronization of charmonia by analysis of recent data from the SPS and RHIC accelerators. Furthermore we discuss an extension of this model towards lower beam energies and develop arguments about the prospects to observe medium modifications of open and hidden charm hadrons. With the imminent start of the LHC accelerator at CERN, exciting prospects for charmonium production studies at the very high energy frontier come into reach. We present arguments that, at such energies, charmonium production becomes a fingerprint of deconfinement: even if no charmonia survive in the quark-gluon plasma, statistical hadronization at the QCD phase boundary of the many tens of charm quarks expected in a single central Pb-Pb collision could lead to an enhanced, rather than suppressed production probability when compared to results for nucleon-nucleon reactions scaled by the number of hard collisions in the Pb-Pb system.
Calculations and predictions are presented within the framework of the statistical hadronization model for transverse momentum spectra of the charmonium states J/$ψ$, $ψ(2S)$ and $X(3872)$ produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions at LHC energies. The results are confronted with available data and exhibit very good agreement by using particle flow profiles from state-of-the-art hydrodynamic calculations. For $X(3872)$ production in Pb-Pb collisions we predict a transverse momentum distribution similar in shape to that for J/$ψ$ with a strong enhancement at low transverse momenta and a production …
We discuss the production of charmonium in nuclear collisions within the framework of the statistical hadronization model. We demonstrate that the model reproduces very well the availble data at RHIC. We provide predictions for the LHC energy where, dependently on the charm production cross section, a dramatically different behaviour of charmonium production as a function of centrality might be expected. We extend our predictions for charm production towards the threshold energies, where charm is expected to be measured at the future FAIR facility.
We discuss the production of charmonium in nuclear collisions within the framework of the statistical hadronization model. We demonstrate that the model reproduces very well the availble data at RHIC. We provide predictions for the LHC energy where, dependently on the charm production cross section, a dramatically different behaviour of charmonium production as a function of centrality might be expected. We discuss also the case in elementary collisions, where clearly the statistical model does not reproduce the measurements.
We discuss the production of charmonium and open charm in nuclear collisions at SPS/FAIR energies within the framework of the statistical hadronization model. The increasing importance at lower energies of Lambda_c production is discussed and provides a challenge for future experiments. We also show that possible modifications of charmed hadrons in the hot hadronic medium do not lead to measurable changes in the cross sections for D-meson production. A possible influence of medium effects can be seen, however, in yields of charmonium. These effects are visible at all energies and results will …
We discuss experimental features of identified particle production from nucleus-nucleus collisions. These features reflect hadronization from a deconfined partonic matter whose particle formation scheme is distinctly different from fragmentation phenomenology in elementary collisions. Multi-parton dynamics, such as quark coalescences or recombinations, appear to be essential to explain the experimental measurements at the intermediate transverse momentum of 2--5 GeV/c. Constituent quarks seem to be the dominant degrees of freedom at hadronization. Heavy quark production should help quantify de…
Dynamics of relativistic heavy-ion collisions is investigated on the basis of a simple (1+1)-dimensional hydrodynamical model in light-cone coordinates. The main emphasis is put on studying sensitivity of the dynamics and observables to the equation of state and initial conditions. Low sensitivity of pion rapidity spectra to the presence of the phase transition is demonstrated, and some inconsistencies of the equilibrium scenario are pointed out. Possible non-equilibrium effects are discussed, in particular, a possibility of an explosive disintegration of the deconfined phase into quark-gluon …
We present a study of charmonia in hot gluonic plasma, for temperatures upto three times the deconfinement transition temperature Tc. q \bar{q} systems with quark masses close to the charm mass and different spin-parity quantum numbers were studied on very fine isotropic lattices. The analysis of temporal correlators, and spectral functions constructed from them, shows that the J/psi and eta_c survive up to quite high temperatures, with little observable change up to 1.5 Tc, and then gradually weakening and disappearing by 3 Tc. For the scalar and axial vector channels, serious modifications a…
We investigate the transition from suppression to enhancement of J/psi mesons produced in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions in the framework of the statistical hadronization model. The calculations are confronted with the most recent data from the RHIC accelerator. This comparison yields first direct evidence for generation of J/psi mesons at the phase boundary. Based on the success of this approach we make specific predictions for LHC energy.
If the deconfinement phase transformation of strongly interacting matter is of first-order and the expanding chromodynamic matter created in a high-energy nuclear collision enters the corresponding region of phase coexistence, a spinodal phase separation might occur. The matter would then condense into a number of separate blobs, each having a particular net strangeness that would remain approximately conserved during the further evolution. We investigate the effect that such `strangeness trapping' may have on strangeness-related hadronic observables. The kaon multiplicity fluctuations are sig…
We investigate a scenario where conditions for Mott dissociation of charmonium are fulfilled locally in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at the short time scales before hadronization and study possible consequences to be drawn from observation of ``anomalous'' thresholds in the J/ψsuppression pattern. We suggest that for a compilation of experiments with different kinematics, variables presently in use to display the observed suppression pattern should be rescaled by the $γ$ factor of the $c\bar c$ state relative to the participant center of mass. This systematics can be tested by invers…
We provide predictions for charmonium and open charm production in nuclear collisions at SPS/FAIR energies within the framework of the statistical hadronization model. The increasing importance at lower energies of Lambda_c production is demonstrated and provides a challenge for future experiments. We also demonstrate that, because of the large charm quark mass and the different timescales for charm quark and charmed hadron production, possible modifications of charmed hadrons in the hot hadronic medium do not lead to measurable changes in cross sections for D-meson production. A possible infl…
In the discussion of hadronization at or close to the freeze-out curve statistical (hadron resonance gas) models play an important role. In particular, in the charmonium sector, regeneration models are considered which rely on the fact that charmonium states can form again already at temperatures well above the QCD transition or hadronization temperature. An important ingredient in these considerations is the regeneration or hadronization of open charm states. In this talk we report on a lattice QCD analysis of correlations of open strange and charm with other conserved quantum numbers like th…
Data from J/psi and psi' production in p-A collisions are used to determine the cross section for absorption of pre-resonance charmonium in nuclear matter. The J/psi suppression in O-Cu, O-U and S-U collisions is fully reproduced by the corresponding nuclear absorption, while Pb-Pb collisions show an additional suppression increasing with centrality. We study the onset of this change in terms of hadronic comover interactions and conclude that so far no conventional hadronic description can consistently account for all data. Deconfinement, starting at a critical point determined by central S-U …
All measured Feynman x_f distributions of the ratio, R, of j_psi production in nuclei relative to production on protons fall off with x_f. They show [2] that absorption of charmonium cannot be the only source of j_psi suppression and that energy loss of the constituents of the incident proton prior to the j_psi production, because of the exponential sqrt(s) dependence of the charmonium cross section, should not be neglected. Including the effects of initial state energy loss we find that the latest measured Pb-Pb j_psi cross sections do not provide any evidence for deconfinement.
We consider an extension of the finite-temperature Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) approach to heavy mesons and quarkonia and apply it to calculate the cross section for the J/Psi breakup reaction J/Psi + pi --> D + D. We study the effects of chiral symmetry restoration in the light quark sector on this process and obtain a critical enhancement of the reaction rate at the chiral/ deconfinement transition. Implications for the kinetics of charmonium production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions are discussed with particular emphasis on the recently observed anomalous J/Psi suppression as …
We investigate mass shifts of charmonia driven by change of the gluon condensate below but near transition temperatures at finite baryonic chemical potential. Extending previous prescription on the relation between gluon condensates and thermodynamic quantities, we model the gluon condensates of hadronic matter at finite temperature and baryonic chemical potential such that the scalar gluon condensate fits with the latest lattice QCD data. By making use of the QCD sum rule and the second order Stark effect, we find that the smoother transition in the full QCD can lead to moderate mass shifts o…
The production of the psi' meson in Pb+Pb collisions at CERN SPS is analyzed. It provides an evidence for charmonium regeneration via charm quark-antiquark coalescence at hadronization.
Modifications in the production pattern of heavy quark bound states have long been considered to provide sensitive signatures for the thermal properties of dense matter created in heavy ion collisions. The original concept of Matsui and Satz for quarkonium suppression as signature for deconfinement in heavy ion collisions has been challenged recently through lattice studies of spectral functions, which indicate the persistence of heavy quark bound states at temperatures well above the transition, as well as through the refined analysis of hadronization and recombination models, which take into…
Heavy flavor measurements in high multiplicity proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions at collider energies enable unique insights into their production and hadronization mechanism because experimental and theoretical uncertainties cancel in ratios of their cross-sections relative to minimum bias events. We explore such event engineering using the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective field theory to compute short distance charmonium cross-sections. The CGC is combined with heavy-quark fragmentation functions to compute $D$-meson cross-sections; for the $J/ψ$, hadronization is described e…
We investigate the production of hadrons in nuclear collisions within the framework of the thermal (or statistical hadronization) model. We discuss both the ligh-quark hadrons as well as charmonium and provide predictions for the LHC energy. Even as its exact magnitude is dependent on the charm production cross section, not yet measured in Pb-Pb collisions, we can confidently predict that at the LHC the nuclear modification factor of charmonium as a function of centrality is larger than that observed at RHIC and compare the experimental results to these predictions.
The production of charmonia is investigated for heavy-ion collisions from SPS to RHIC energies. Our approach incorporates two sources of $J/Ψ$ yield: (i) a direct contribution arising from early (hard) parton-parton collisions, subject to subsequent nuclear absorption, quark-gluon plasma and hadronic dissociation, and (ii) statistical production at the hadronization transition by coalescence of $c$ and $\bar{c}$ quarks. Within an expanding thermal fireball framework, the model reproduces $J/Ψ$ centrality dependencies observed at the SPS in Pb-Pb and S-U collisions reasonably well. The study of…
After a brief review of the various scenarios for quarkonium production in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions we focus on the ingredients and assumptions underlying the statistical hadronization model. We then confront model predictions for J/$ψ$ phase space distributions with the most recent data from the RHIC accelerator. Analysis of the rapidity dependence of the J/$ψ$ nuclear modification factor yields first evidence for the production of J/$ψ$ mesons at the phase boundary. We conclude with predictions for charmonium production at the LHC.
Following the quark-hadron duality concept, we show that the number of hadrons generated in the deconfinement matter is entirely determined by the exact non-equilibrium Green's functions of partons in the medium and the vertex function governing the probability of the confinement-deconfinement phase transition. In such an approach, compactifying the standard (3+1) chromodynamics into $ QCD_{xy} + QCD_{zt}$, the rate of the hadrons produced in particle collisions is derived in the explicit form provided that the hadronization is the first order phase transition. The pion production is found to …
Strangeness signature of of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is central to the exploration of baryon-dense matter: the search for the critical point and onset of deconfinement. I report on the discovery of QGP by means of strangeness: The key historical figures and their roles in this quest are introduced and the experimental results obtained are discussed. The important role of antihyperons is emphasized. The statistical hadronization model, and sudden hadronization are described. Results of present day data analysis: strangeness and entropy content of a large fireball, and the universal hadronizatio…
We investigate the in-medium modification of pseudoscalar and vector mesons in a QCD motivated chiral quark model by solving the Dyson-Schwinger equations for quarks and mesons at finite temperature for a wide mass range of meson masses, from light (pi, rho) to open-charm (D, D*) states. At the chiral / deconfinement phase transition, the quark-antiquark bound states enter the continuum of unbound states and become broad resonances (the hadronic Mott effect). We calculate the in-medium cross sections for charmonium dissociation due to collisions with light hadrons in a chiral Lagrangian approa…
The production of quarkonium in heavy ion collisions is studied at RHIC and LHC energies. General arguments indicate that, due to initial production of multiple quark pairs in each central collision, the final population of quarkonium may exhibit significant enhancements over straightforward extrapolation of behavior at SPS energy. Explicit calculations based on both a statistical hadronization picture and a kinetic formation mechanism in a deconfined state verify these general expectations. Such enhancements will alter the nature of how quarkonium yields may be used as a signature of deconfin…
The strong interaction between heavy quarks and the quark gluon plasma makes the open and hidden charm hadrons be sensitive probes of the deconfinement phase transition in high energy nuclear collisions. Both the cold and hot nuclear matter effects change with the colliding energy and significantly influence the heavy quark and charmonium yield and their transverse momentum distributions. The ratio of averaged quarkonium transverse momentum square and the elliptic flow reveal the nature of the QCD medium created in heavy ion collisions at SPS, RHIC and LHC energies.
We briefly review the predictions of the thermal model for hadron production in comparison to latest data from RHIC and extrapolate the calculations to LHC energy. Our main emphasis is to confront the model predictions with the recently released data from ALICE at the LHC. This comparison reveals an apparent anomaly for protons and anti-protons which we discuss briefly. We also demonstrate that our statistical hadronization predictions for J/$ψ$ production agree very well with the most recent LHC data, lending support to the picture in which there is complete charmonium melting in the quark-gl…
We assess transport properties of heavy quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) that show a strong non-perturbative behavior. A T-matrix approach based on a potential taken from lattice QCD hints at the presence of heavy-quark (HQ) resonant scattering with an increasing strength as the temperature, $T$, reaches the critical temperature, $T_c \simeq 170 \; \MeV$ for deconfinement from above. The implementation of HQ resonance scattering along with a hadronization via quark coalescence under the conditions of the plasma created in heavy-ion collisions has been shown to correctly describe both the…
Within the Hadron-String Dynamics (HSD) transport approach we study the suppression pattern of charmonia at RHIC with respect to centrality and rapidity employing various model concepts such as variants of the 'comover absorption' model or the 'charmonium melting' scenario. We find that especially the ratio of the forward to mid-rapidity nuclear modification factors of J/Psi (R_AA (forward) / R_AA (mid)) cannot be explained by the interactions with 'formed' comoving mesons or by the 'color screening mechanism' alone. Only when incorporating interactions of the c or c-bar quark with a pre-hadro…
The Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach consistently simulates the full evolution of a relativistic heavy-ion collision from the initial hard scatterings string formation through the dynamical deconfinement phase transition to the quark gluon plasma (QGP), to the hadronization and to subsequent interactions in the hadronic phase. The transport theoretical description of quarks and gluons is based on a dynamical quasiparticle model for partons matched to reproduce recent lattice QCD results in thermodynamic equilibrium. The transition from partonic to hadronic degrees of fre…
We build up a model to reproduce the experimentally measured $R_{AA}$ of $J/ψ$ near midrapidty in Au+Au collision at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV. The model takes into account the $J/ψ$ suppression from the quark-gluon plasma and hadron gas as well as the nuclear absorption of primordial charmonia and the regeneration effects at the hadronization stage, and hence is a generalization of the two component model introduced by Grandchamp and Rapp. The improvements in this work are twofold; the addition of the initial local temperature profile and a consistent use of QCD NLO formula for both the dissoci…
The agreement of hydrodynamic predictions of differential elliptic flow and radial flow patterns with Au+Au data is one of the main lines of evidence suggesting the nearly perfect fluid properties of the strongly coupled Quark Gluon Plasma, sQGP, produced at RHIC. We study the sensitivity of this conclusion to different hydrodynamic assumptions on chemical and thermal freezeout after the sQGP hadronizes. We show that if chemical freezeout occurs at the hadronization time, the differential elliptic flow for pions increase with proper time in the late hadronic phase until thermal freezeout and l…
We reexamine the Fermi motion effects on the diffractive photo- and electroproductions of heavy vector-mesons, J/psi and psi', off a nucleon in the leading ln(Q^2/Lambda_QCD^2) approximation (LLA) of QCD. We take into account all the Fermi motion corrections arising from the relative motion of quarks inside the charmonium, which is treated as a nonrelativistic bound state of c and \bar{c}. Our key ingredients are the correct spin structure for the ^3S_1 c\bar{c} bound state, the off-shellness in the c\bar{c} \to J/psi (psi') hadronization vertex, and the modification of the gluon's longitudina…
The peculiar role of heavy-flavour observables in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is discussed. Produced in the early stage, $c$ and $b$ quarks cross the hot medium arising from the collision, interacting strongly with the latter, until they hadronize. Depending on the strength of the interaction heavy quarks may or not approach kinetic equilibrium with the plasma, tending in the first case to follow the collective flow of the expanding fireball. The presence of a hot deconfined medium may also affect heavy-quark hadronization, being possible for them to recombine with the surrounding light …
We address dilepton production in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV by employing the parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) off-shell transport approach. Within the PHSD one goes beyond the quasiparticle approximation by solving generalized transport equations on the basis of the off-shell Kadanoff-Baym equations for the Green's functions in the phase-space representation. The approach consistently describes the full evolution of a relativistic heavy-ion collision from the initial hard scatterings and string formation through the dynamical deconfinement phase transition to the quark-gluon p…
After a brief survey of the remarkable accomplishments of the current heavy ion collision experiments up to 200A GeV, we address in depth the role of strange particle production in the search for new phases of matter in these collisions. In particular, we show that the observed enhancement pattern of otherwise rarely produced multistrange antibaryons can be consistently explained assuming color deconfinement in a localized, rapidly disintegrating hadronic source. We develop the theoretical description of this source, and in particular study QCD based processes of strangeness production in the …
We examine whether the breakdown in elliptic flow quark number scaling observed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) energy scan is related to the turning off of deconfinement by testing the hypothesis that hydrodynamics and parton coalescence always apply, but are obscured, at lower energies, by variations in the widths of quark and anti-quark rapidity distribution. We find that this effect is enough to spoil quark number scaling in elliptic flow. A lack of scaling in data therefore does not signal the absence of partonic degrees of freedom and hadronization by coalescence. In a coal…
Inclusive $J/ψ$ productions in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 5.02, 7, and 13 TeV with the PACIAE model
School of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University（陕西师范大学物理与信息工程学院）；School of Physics and Electronic Science, Guizhou Normal University（贵州师范大学物理与电子科学学院）；Wuhan Textile University（武汉纺织大学）；Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE) and Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University（华中师范大学夸克与轻子物理教育部重点实验室及粒子物理研究所）；China Institute of Atomic Energy（中国原子能科学研究院）
