Regeneration of bottomonia in an open quantum systems approach

Abstract

We demonstrate the importance of quantum jumps in the nonequilibrium evolution of bottomonium states in the quark-gluon plasma. Based on nonrelativistic effective field theory and the open quantum system framework, we evolve the density matrix of color singlet and octet pairs. We show that quantum regeneration of singlet states from octet configurations is necessary to understand experimental results for the suppression of both bottomonium ground and excited states. The values of the heavy-quarkonium transport coefficients used are consistent with recent lattice QCD determinations.