English

Thermal Width of the $\Upsilon$ at Large t' Hooft Coupling

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2010-04-30 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to show that the heavy quark (static) potential in a strongly-coupled plasma develops an imaginary part at finite temperature. Thus, deeply bound heavy quarkonia states acquire a small nonzero thermal width when the t'Hooft coupling λ=g2Nc1\lambda=g^2 N_c \gg 1 and the number of colors NcN_c \to \infty. In the dual gravity description, this imaginary contribution comes from thermal fluctuations around the bottom of the classical sagging string in the bulk that connects the heavy quarks located at the boundary. We predict a strong suppression of Υ\Upsilon's in heavy-ion collisions and discuss how this may be used to estimate the initial temperature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0907.3062,
  title  = {Thermal Width of the $\Upsilon$ at Large t' Hooft Coupling},
  author = {Jorge Noronha and Adrian Dumitru},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.3062},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

9 pages, version to appear in Physical Review Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:26:07.811Z