The relation between cross-section, decay width and imaginary potential of heavy quarkonium in a quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

Heavy quarkonium suppression was proposed long ago as a signal of the formation of a deconfined phase in heavy ion collisions. Originally the mechanism responsible for this suppression was thought to be color screening. However perturbative computations and recent lattice studies suggest the existence of an imaginary part of the potential which could have a more important role for suppression than screening. In this work we review some general aspects of effective field theories for heavy quarkonium in the medium and discuss the physical phenomena behind the imaginary part of the potential and the decay width of heavy quarkonium and their corresponding cross sections.