Quarkonium Binding and Dissociation The Spectral Analysis of the QGP.pdfVIP

September 19, 2006 BI-TP 2006/34 Quarkonium Binding and Dissociation: The Spectral Analysis of the QGP* 6 Helmut Satz 0 0 2 Fakult¨at f¨ur Physik, Universit¨at Bielefeld p Postfach 100 131, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany e S 9 Abstract: 1 1 In statistical QCD, the thermal properties of the quark-gluon plasma can be determined v 7 by studying the in-medium behaviour of heavy quark bound states. The results can be 9 applied to quarkonium production in high energy nuclear collisions, if these indeed form 1 9 a fully equilibrated QGP. Modifications could arise if an initial charm excess persists in 0 the collision evolution and causes quarkonium regeneration at hadronization. 6 0 / h p - p e h : v i X r a * Invited talk at the 2nd International Conference on Hard and Electromagnetic Probes of High Energy Collisions, Asilomar/California, June 9 - 15, 2006, and at the International Workshop on Heavy Quarkonium 2006, Brookhaven National Laboratory, June 27 - 30, 2006. 1. Introduction We know from statistical QCD that strongly interacting matter undergoes a deconfine- ment transition to a new state, the quark-gluon plasma. How can we study this state - which phenomena provide us with information about its thermal properties? The main probes considered so far are • e-m signals (real or virtual photons) ¯ • heavy flavours and quarkonia (QQ pairs) • jets (energetic partons) The ultimate aim must be to carry out ab initio calculations of the in-medium behaviour of these probes in finite temperature QCD. In hig