J/psi production in a gluon plasma produced in Au-Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Abstract

Centrality dependence of J/psi production in Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV nucleon-nucleon center of mass energy is studied using the Glauber model plus the kinetic formation model. Initial J/psi production and destruction by incoming nucleons are described by the Glauber model. J/psi-charm equilibration in the gluon plasma is described by the kinetic formation model. We explore the possibility of J/psi suppression suggested by the recent PHENIX data. We show that the J/psi yield monotonically decreases with increasing centrality in the kinetic formation model when the charm mass is smaller than a critical mass. The final J/psi yield is between the value after the Glauber suppression and the dynamical equilibrium value. This underscores the importance of both J/psi production from d-Au collisions, which is essential in determining the Glauber suppression, and high statistics Au-Au data, which can further constrain final state J/psi-charm equilibration.