Non-Perturbative Transport of Heavy Quarkonia in Ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collision

Ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions (URHICs) provide a fertile ground for studying Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) under extreme conditions. The heavy quarks and quarkonia provide an excellent probe of the medium created during such collisions, through the use of pertinent transport models. A central input to quarkonium transport models are their reaction rates in the thermal medium. To date, these have mostly been calculated using perturbative QCD. However, non-perturbative effects within the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) are likely of prime importance.

Here we adopt the thermodynamic T-matrix formalism, offering a self-consistent, non-perturbative approach to hot QCD matter. Systematic studies reveal a high sensitivity of quarkonia reaction rates to their in-medium binding energy, as well as to off-shell effects in the outgoing heavy-quark spectral functions and their interplay with interference effects. These features signify, in particular, the importance of quantum effects in sQGP.