Nuclear-bound quarkonium.

Abstract

We show that the QCD van der Waals interaction due to multiple gluon exchange provides a new kind of attractive nuclear force capable of binding heavy quarkonia to nuclei. The parameters of the potential are estimated by identifying multigluon exchange with the Pomeron contributions to elastic meson-nucleon scattering. The gluonic potential is then used to study the properties of cc\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{} nuclear-bound states. In particular, we predict bound states of the ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{c}$ with $^{3}\mathrm{He}$ and heavier nuclei. Production modes and rates are also discussed.