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Simulation of heavy quarkonium equilibration in the quark-gluon plasma

Shouxing Zhao and Min He*

  • *Contact author: minhephys@gmail.com
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 094018 – Published 12 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/4rdc-9dkx

Abstract

We simulate the heavy quarkonium equilibration through transport in a static and homogeneous quark-gluon plasma (QGP) box within the semiclassical Boltzmann approach, incorporating both the leading-order and next-to-leading-order dissociation and regeneration reactions. The scattering amplitudes involved are taken from perturbative computations based on effective color-electric dipole coupling of the heavy quarkonium with thermal gluons. By coupling the Langevin simulation of single heavy quark diffusion and the Boltzmann transport of the heavy quarkonium in a real-time fashion, we demonstrate how the kinetic and chemical equilibrium of heavy quarkonium with single heavy quarks in the medium is achieved in terms of both the bound state’s yields and momentum distributions. The pertinent equilibration time turns out to be comparable to the lifetime of the QGP created in the most central heavy-ion collisions at the LHC energies. The role of the intricate interplay between the open and hidden heavy sector in the process of equilibration is highlighted. This work provides a dynamical way of understanding the phenomenological success of the statistical hadronization model for charmonium production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and also paves the way for realistic phenomenological applications to heavy quarkonium transport.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 094018– Published 12 November, 2025
  • Received 20 August 2025
  • Accepted 20 October 2025
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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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