
Charmonium transport in the high-µBmedium
Jiaxing Zhao1, 2 and Baoyi Chen3, ∗
1Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2SUBATECH, Universit´e de Nantes, IMT Atlantique,
IN2P3/CNRS, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44307 Nantes cedex 3, France
3Department of Physics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300354, China
(Dated: May 23, 2023)
We employ the transport model coupled with hydrodynamic equations to study the charmonium
dissociation and regeneration in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with the large baryon chemical
potential in Au-Au collisions at the energies of √sNN = (39, 14.5, 7.7) GeV. The baryon chemical
potential µBis encoded in both Debye mass characterizing the heavy-quark potential and also the
equation of state (EoS) of the bulk medium respectively. After considering µB-corrections in both
heavy quarkonium and the QGP medium, we calculate the nuclear modification factor RAA of
charmonium. And find the µBinfluence on charmonium production at √sNN = 39 and 14.5 GeV
is negligible, while the RAA of charmonium is reduced considering µBinfluence at √sNN = 7.7
GeV Au-Au collisions. It is crucial for studying charmonium production in low energy and also
fixed-target heavy-ion collisions.
I. INTRODUCTION
In relativistic heavy-ion collisions, a hot deconfined
medium consisting of quarks and gluons, called “Quark-
Gluon Plasma” (QGP) is believed to be created. Heavy
quarkonia which are produced in the initial parton hard
scatterings have been regarded as clean probes of the
QGP production [1]. Heavy quarkonium is the bound
state of the heavy quark and its antiquark forced by
an attractive potential. In the hot medium, this attrac-
tive potential is screened by thermal partons, which re-
sults in the dissociation of heavy quarkonium and sup-
pression of its production in relativistic heavy-ion col-
lisions [2]. The nuclear modification factor RAA is an
observable proposed to characterize such suppression.
And various theoretical models have been developed to
study the heavy quarkonium evolution and suppression
in the hot medium, such as the statistic hadronization
model [3], coalescence hadronization model [4,5], trans-
port model [6–11], open quantum system [12–15], time-
dependent Schr¨odinger equation [16–18], and newly ex-
tended Remler equation [19]. The heavy quarkonia not
only can be used to probe the QGP properties but also be
widely investigated to probe the early state tilted energy
deposition and fluctuation of heavy-ion collisions [20,21],
and strong electromagnetic and vorticity fields created in
non-central heavy-ion collisions [22–26].
At low energy collisions such as the Beam Energy Scan
(BES) program at RHIC [27], NA60+ at SPS [28], and
Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) at FAIR [29], the
temperatures of the created medium are much lower than
that in heavy-ion collisions at top RHIC and LHC en-
ergies. While the baryon chemical potential µBin the
central regions of low energy collisions enhanced dramat-
ically. It can be much larger than the temperature of
∗Electronic address: baoyi.chen@tju.edu.cn
the QGP medium, such as the µB∼420 MeV at Au-Au
collisions with √sNN = 7 GeV. How such large baryon
chemical potential affects heavy quarkonia evolution and
production is an interesting and worth-studying ques-
tion. The previous studies based on Hard Thermal and
Dense Loop (HTL/HDL) theory show the Debye mass
and heavy quark potential are changed in the baryon-rich
medium [30–32]. Recently, based on the time-dependent
Schr¨odinger equation, the charmonium dissociation is
studied with baryon chemical potential corrected poten-
tial [33]. In this paper, we will establish a more realistic
model to study carefully the quarkonium dissociation and
production in a high baryon density QGP medium which
is created in Au-Au collisions at the energies of √sNN =
(39, 14.5, 7.7) GeV.
We first employ the µB- and T-dependent heavy quark
potential to calculate the binding energies and aver-
aged radius of charmonium via the two-body Schr¨odinger
equation in Section II. The binding energies are used to
estimate the charmonium dissociation in high µB-QGP.
The evolution of the QGP is described by the hydrody-
namic model. µBcontribution is encoded in the equation
of state of hot medium. While the evolution of charmo-
nium is controlled by the Boltzmann equation. Including
µBcontributions in both heavy quarkonium and the bulk
medium, we present the charmonium yield and suppres-
sion in section III. A summary is given in section IV.
II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A. Heavy quark properties with high baryon
density
In a vacuum, the mass spectrum of heavy quarko-
nium is well described with the Cornell potential, V(r) =
−α/r+σr. At finite temperatures, heavy quark potential
is screened. The hot medium effects can be absorbed in
the heavy quark potential via the Debye mass mD[34].
arXiv:2210.04661v2 [nucl-th] 21 May 2023