Formation of heavy quarks in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Abstract

We investigate the production of heavy quarks in continuum and bound states in nuclear collisions. Creation rates for free {ital b{bar b}} and {ital t{bar t}} quark pairs and for bottomonium and toponium in the ground state are computed at energies of the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and Superconducting Super Collider. Central and peripheral heavy-ion collisions are discussed. For top-quark creation we assumed a mass range of 90{le}{ital m}{sub {ital t}}{le}250 GeV. The creation rate for top quarks in peripheral collisions is estimated to be by a factor 40 to 130 smaller compared with corresponding central collisions. For {ital m}{sub {ital t}}=130 GeV we calculated a creation rate of about 4760 top-quark pairs per day at the LHC (3.5 TeV/nucleon) for Pb-Pb collisions.