STRONGLY INTERACTING QGP AND QUARKONIUM SUPPRESSION AT RHIC AND LHC ENERGIES

Abstract

We have developed an equation of state for strongly interacting quark–gluon plasma (QGP) in the framework of strongly coupled plasma with appropriate modifications to take account of color and flavor degrees of freedom and the interactions among themselves. For this purpose we used the effective potential to improve the plasma parameter (Γ) by correcting the full Cornell potential with a dielectric function embodying the effects of the deconfined medium and not its Coulomb part alone and obtain the equation of state in terms of Γ. Our results on thermodynamic observables viz. pressure, energy density, speed of sound etc. nicely fit to the results of lattice equation of state for gluon, massless as well massive flavored plasma. We have then employed our equation of state to estimate the quarkonium suppression in an expanding QGP produced in the relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We have found that our predictions matches with the recent PHENIX data on the centrality dependence of J/ψ suppression in Au+Au collisions at BNL RHIC within the limit of other uncertainties. We have also predicted for the ϒ suppression in Pb+Pb collisions at LHC energy which could be tested in the ALICE experiments at CERN LHC.