Eur. Phys. J. C (2008) 58: 437-444
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-008-0772-6

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Charmonium dissociation and recombination at RHIC and LHC

¹ Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Université de Paris XI, Bâtiment 210, 91405, Orsay Cedex, France
² Department of Physics, University of Oslo, 0316, Oslo, Norway
³ Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, 119899, Moscow, Russia
⁴ Departamento de Física de Partículas, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
⁵ Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, 117259, Moscow, Russia

^* e-mail: konrad.tywoniuk@fys.uio.no

Received: 10 January 2008
Revised: 15 July 2008
Published online: 23 October 2008

Abstract

Charmonium production at heavy-ion colliders is considered within the comovers-interaction model. The formalism is extended by including possible secondary J/ψ production through recombination and an estimate of recombination effects is made without adjusting the model parameters. The comovers-interaction model also includes a comprehensive treatment of initial-state nuclear effects, which are discussed in the context of such high energies. With these tools, the model properly describes the centrality and the rapidity dependence of experimental data at RHIC energy,  GeV, for both Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions. Predictions for LHC,  TeV, are presented and the assumptions and extrapolations involved are discussed.