J/psi production from charm coalescence in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

J/psi production and collective flow is studied with a coalescence model based on phase space distribution of charm quarks from a multi-phase transport model simulation of relativistic heavy ion collisions. Both the yield and the flow of J/psi particles are sensitive to charm quark final state interactions. As the charm quark rescattering cross section increases from 3 mb to 10 mb, J/psi elliptic flow increases faster than corresponding light hadron elliptic flows. The v_2(p_t) of J/psi crosses that of D mesons to reach a value that is about the peak value of the D meson flow but at a higher p_t. As J/psi elliptic flow has only contributions from charm quarks, it complements D meson elliptic flow in reflecting charm properties in the Quark-Gluon Plasma.