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  • Open Access

In-medium heavy quark-antiquark T matrix without partial-wave expansion

Anurag Tiwari and Min He*

  • *Contact author: minhephys@gmail.com
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Phys. Rev. C 113, 044908 – Published 13 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zflx-2vql

Abstract

The T matrix of the heavy quark-antiquark (QQ¯) pair interacting through a screened Cornell potential in the quark-gluon plasma is computed without employing the partial-wave expansion. This is compared with the results obtained using the conventional method of partial-wave expansion. Through a comprehensive survey over a range of screening mass and center-of-mass (c.m.) energy, which, when combined, determine the orbital angular momentum involved in the scattering, it is demonstrated that a substantial number of partial-wave terms are necessary to precisely match the full scattering amplitude directly obtained from the method without partial-wave expansion. For moderate screening masses (corresponding to one to two times the crossover transition temperature) and c.m. energy, the number of partial waves required for satisfactory matching turns out as large as 10–20, substantially larger than what one would expect based on simply measuring the magnitudes of the first few partial-wave amplitudes. This highlights the efficacy and advantage of the new method in directly obtaining the full scattering amplitude needed for further computation of physical observables, which is illustrated by comparing the calculations of heavy quark-antiquark scattering cross section and heavy quark drag coefficient between the two methods. We also employ the new method to calculate the T matrix at c.m. energies below the QQ¯mass threshold, and demonstrate the presence of bound states of different orbital quantum numbers simultaneously in a single energy scan.

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Phys. Rev. C 113, 044908– Published 13 April, 2026
  • Received 20 August 2025
  • Revised 1 December 2025
  • Accepted 13 March 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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