Quarkonium production in light-ion collisions with the ALICE experiment

Abstract

Quarkonium production has long been considered as one of the golden probes to study the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In fact, the early production of heavy quarks (ccbar) and (bbbar) makes quarkonia an ideal tool to investigate the evolution of the hot and dense medium produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In such a medium, quarkonium production is expected to be suppressed due to the screening of the binding potential between the heavy quark and antiquark and/or through in-medium interactions. Moreover, at LHC energies the recombination of uncorrelated charm quarks pairs, namely regeneration, was found to significantly affect charmonium observables, in contraposition to the suppression mechanism. In addition, measurements in smaller collision systems as p-Pb have highlighted the possibility to observe QGP-like effects. In this context, the study of charmonium production in intermediate collision systems, as light-ion collisions, becomes more and more interesting, representing an ideal test ground for the state-of-the art theoretical models. In this contribution the new measurements of charmonium production will be shown using the light-ion collisions data collected for the first time at the LHC in 2025 (oxygen-oxygen (OO), proton-oxygen (pO)). The results will be shown exploiting the forward ALICE rapidity coverage (2.5 < y < 4). Finally, the measurements will be compared with the existing theoretical models.