Charm coalescence at relativistic energies.pdf

a r X i v : h e p - p h / 0 3 0 5 2 7 7 v 2 1 7 O c t 2 0 0 3 Charm Coalescence at relativistic energies A.P. Kostyuk1,2, M.I. Gorenstein1,2, H. Sto?cker1, and W. Greiner1 1 Institut fu?r Theoretische Physik, J.W. Goethe-Universita?t, Frankfurt am Main, Germany and 2 Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyiv, Ukraine (Dated: February 1, 2008) The J/ψ yield at midrapidity at the top RHIC (relativistic heavy ion collider) energy is calculated within the statistical coalescence model, which assumes charmonium formation at the late stage of the reaction from the charm quarks and antiquarks created earlier in hard parton collisions. The results are compared to the new PHENIX data and to predictions of the standard models, which assume formation of charmonia exclusively at the initial stage of the reaction and their subsequent suppression. Two versions of the suppression scenario are considered. One of them assumes gradual charmonium suppression by comovers, while the other one supposes that the suppression sets in abruptly due to quark-gluon plasma formation. Surprisingly, both versions give very similar results. In contrast, the statistical coalescence model predicts a few times larger J/ψ yield in the most central collisions. A study of open and hidden charm production in nucleus-nucleus (A + A) collisions at RHIC (relativistic heavy ion collider) BNL is expected to shed light upon an important physical question of the space-time history of the charmonium formation. The standard “suppres- sion” approach is based on the idea of Matsui and Satz [1]: charmonia are formed at the early stage of A + A reaction, the further evolution leads exclusively to their suppression due to interaction with initial nucleons from the colliding nuclei, secondary comoving hadrons, and/or deconfined medium. The idea of thermal J/ψ production [2] triggered the development of an alternative charmonium formation scenario, the statistical coalescence model (SCM) [3, 4]. Hidden char