Efficient simulation of quarkonium master equation beyond the dipole approximation

Abstract

QTRAJ is a computer code that simulates the propagation of quarkonium in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) based on the quantum-trajectory algorithm. This algorithm solves a master equation in which the quarkonium is treated as an open quantum system (OQS). A major advantage of this approach is that it turns a 3D spatial evolution for a density matrix into a 1D Schr\"odinger equation for a wavefunction with a non-hermitian Hamiltonian, drastically reducing the computational cost. So far, the interaction implemented in the master equation was obtained within the framework of potential non-relativistic QCD (pNRQCD), and restricted to the regime $rT \ll 1$, where $r$ is the size of the color dipole and $T$ is the temperature. In the environment produced in heavy-ion collisions (HIC's) this limit is accurate for $\Upsilon(1S)$, but the applicability to other quarkonium states is dubious. In the present study we generalize the above approach, extending it to the regime $rT\!\sim\! 1$ in the one-gluon exchange approximation, with proper Hard Thermal Loop (HTL) resummation of medium effects. This is done by implementing new jump operators connecting different color states of the $Q\bar Q$ pair and expanding them in plane waves, giving rise to a variation of the algorithm present in QTRAJ 1.0. Here we provide an overview of this approach comparing the $rT \ll 1$ and $rT\sim 1$ cases, and we discuss prospects for phenomenological application to excited states of bottomonium.