Heavy Mesons and Impact Ionization of Heavy Quarkonia

Abstract

At the chiral restoration/deconfinement transition, most hadrons undergo a Mott transition from being bound states in the confined phase to resonances in the deconfined phase. We investigate the consequences of this qualitative change in the hadron spectrum on final state interactions of charmonium in hot and dense matter, and show that the Mott effect for D-mesons leads to a critical enhancement of the J/$\psi$ dissociation rate. Anomalous J/psi suppression in the NA50 experiment is discussed as well as the role of the Mott effect for the heavy flavor kinetics in future experiments at the LHC. The status of our calculations of heavy quarkonium dissociation cross sections due to quark and gluon impact is reviewed, and estimates for in-medium effects due to the lowering of the ionisation threshold are given.