Azimuthal asymmetry of J/Psi suppression in non-central heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

The azimuthal asymmetry of $J/\psi$ suppression in non-central heavy-ion collisions is studied within a dynamic model of $J/\psi$ suppression in a deconfined partonic medium. Within this model, $J/\psi$ suppression in heavy-ion collisions is caused mainly by the initial state nuclear absorption and dissociation via gluon-$J/\psi$ scattering in deconfined partonic medium. Only the second mechanism gives arise to azimuthal asymmetry of the final $J/\psi$ production. We demonstrate that if there is an onset of suppression by quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in the NA50 data, it must be accompanied by the non-vanishing azimuthal asymmetry. Using the same critical density above which the QGP effect enters, we predict the azimuthal asymmetric coefficient $v_2$ as well as the survival probability for $J/\psi$ at the RHIC energy.