Nuclear suppression of J/ψ: From RHIC to the LHC

Abstract

A parameter-free calculation for J/ψ suppression in pA collisions, based on the dipole description, is confronted with the new data from the PHENIX experiment. Achieving good agreement, we employed this model predicting the contribution of initial state interactions (ISI) to J/ψ suppression in AA collisions. Such a transition from pA to AA is not straightforward, since involves specific effects of double color filtering and boosting of the saturation scale. Relying on this refined ISI contribution, we updated the previous analysis of RHIC data on J/ψ production in Cu-Cu and Au-Au collisions at √s=200 GeV, and determined the transport coefficient of the created dense medium at q0=0.6 GeV2/fm. Nuclear effects for J/ψ production at the LHC are predicted using the transport coefficient q0=0.8 GeV2/fm, extracted from data on suppression of high-pT hadrons in central lead-lead collisions at √s=2.76 TeV. Our analysis covers only direct J/ψ production, while data may also include the feed-down from decay of heavier states and B-mesons. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.