Extraction of the Heavy-Quark Potential from Bottomonium Observables in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

The in-medium color potential is a fundamental quantity for understanding the properties of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP). Open and hidden heavy-flavor (HF) production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions (URHICs) has been found to be a sensitive probe of this potential. Here we utilize a previously developed quarkonium transport approach in combination with insights from open HF diffusion to extract the color-singlet potential from experimental results on $\Upsilon$ production in URHICs. Starting from a parameterized trial potential, we evaluate the $\Upsilon$ transport parameters and conduct systematic fits to available data for the centrality dependence of ground and excited states at RHIC and the LHC. The best fits and their statistical significance are converted into a temperature-dependent potential. Including nonperturbative effects in the dissociation rate guided from open HF phenomenology, we extract a rather strongly coupled potential with substantial remnants of the long-range confining force in the QGP.