J/Psi production in heavy ion collisions and gluon saturation

Abstract

We calculate the inclusive J/Psi production in heavy ion collisions including the effects of gluon saturation in the wave functions of the colliding nuclei. We argue that the dominant production mechanism in proton--nucleus and nucleus--nucleus collisions for heavy nuclei is different from the one in hadron-hadron interactions. We find that the rapidity distribution of primary J/Psi production is more peaked around midrapidity than the analogous distribution in elementary pp collisions. We discuss the consequences of this fact on the experimentally observed J/Psi suppression in Au-Au collisions at RHIC energies.