Formation Time Scales for Quarkonia in a Deconfining Medium

Abstract

Production of heavy quark antiquark systems in high energy heavy ion collisions must involve relativistic momentum components in a quantum mechanical approach. If the color forces are screened in a deconfining medium, one can define the analog of a formation or separation time by an overlap integral in the nonrelativistic bound state rest frame. This time parameter has some interesting properties which depend on the momentum spectrum of the initial quarks. Consequences of these properties for the phenomenology of deconfinement signals are discussed.