Anti-de sitter/conformal-field-theory calculation of screening in a hot wind

Area of Science:

• High Energy Physics
• Quantum Chromodynamics
• Heavy Ion Collisions

Background:

• J/psi meson suppression in heavy ion collisions is a key probe of the quark-gluon plasma.
• Lattice QCD calculations often assume J/psi mesons are at rest, differing from experimental conditions where they experience a hot fluid wind.

Purpose of the Study:

• To perform the first rigorous nonperturbative calculation of the effect of wind velocity on the screening length of heavy quark-antiquark pairs.
• To investigate the impact of this velocity dependence on J/psi suppression in hot N=4 supersymmetric QCD.

Main Methods:

• Nonperturbative calculation of the screening length for heavy quark-antiquark pairs in hot N=4 supersymmetric QCD.
• Inclusion of a relative velocity (wind) between the quark-antiquark pair and the hot fluid.

Main Results:

• Derived a formula for the screening length L(s) that explicitly depends on wind velocity v and temperature T: L(s)(v,T)=f(v)[1-v(2)](1/4)/piT.
• Found that L(s) exhibits approximate velocity scaling: L(s)(v,T) approximately L(s)(0,T)/sqrt[gamma].
• The function f(v) was found to be only mildly dependent on velocity and wind direction.

Conclusions:

• The calculated velocity scaling provides a potential explanation for the observed suppression of J/psi mesons in heavy ion collisions.
• This effect is significant for J/psi mesons with high transverse momenta, which are experimentally accessible.