In this paper we study the relation between the light-front (infinite momentum) and rest-frame descriptions of quarkonia. While the former is more convenient for high-energy production, the latter is usually used for the evaluation of charmonium prop
erties. In particular, we discuss the dynamics of a relativistically moving system with nonrelativistic internal motion and give relations between rest frame and light-front potentials used for the description of quarkonium states. We consider two approximations, first the small coupling regime, and next the nonperturbative small binding energy approximation. In both cases we get consistent results. Our results could be relevant for the description of final state interactions in a wide class of processes, including quarkonium production on nuclei and plasma. Moreover, they can be extended to the description of final state interactions in the production of weakly bound systems, such as for example the deuteron.
A colorless c-cbar dipole emerging from a heavy ion collision and developing the charmonium wave function can be broken-up by final state interactions (FSI) propagating through the hot medium created in the collision. We single out two mechanisms of
charmonium attenuation: (i) Debye color screening, called melting; and (ii) color-exchange interaction with the medium, called absorption. The former problem has been treated so far only for charmonia at rest embedded in the medium, while in practice their transverse momenta at the LHC are quite high, <p_T^2>=7-10 GeV^2. We demonstrate that a c-cbar dipole may have a large survival probability even at infinitely high temperature. We develop a procedure of Lorentz boosting of the Schroedinger equation to a moving reference frame and perform the first realistic calculations of the charmonium survival probability employing the path-integral technique, incorporating both melting and absorption. These effects are found to have comparable magnitudes. We also calculated the FSI suppression factor for the radial excitation psi(2S) and found it to be stronger than for J/psi, except large p_T, where psi(2S) is relatively enhanced. The azimuthal asymmetry parameter v_2 is also calculated.
A parton produced with a high transverse momentum in a hard collision is regenerating its color field, intensively radiating gluons and losing energy. This process cannot last long, if it ends up with production of a leading hadron carrying the main
fraction z_h of the initial parton momentum. So energy conservation imposes severe constraints on the length scale of production of a single hadron with high pT. As a result, the main reason for hadron quenching observed in heavy ion collisions, is not energy loss, but attenuation of the produced colorless dipole in the created dense medium. The latter mechanism, calculated with the path-integral method, explains well the observed suppression of light hadrons and the elliptic flow in a wide range of energies, from the lowest energy of RHIC up to LHC, and in a wide range of transverse momenta. The values of the transport coefficient extracted from data range within 1-2 GeV^2/fm, dependent on energy, and agree well with the theoretical expectations.
Gluons at small x in high-energy nuclei overlap in the longitudinal direction, so the nucleus acts as a single source of gluons, like higher Fock components in a single nucleon, which contribute to inelastic collisions with a high multiplicity of pro
duced hadrons. This similarity helps to make a link between nuclear effects in pA and high-multiplicity pp collisions. Such a relation is well confirmed by data for the J/Psi production rate in high-multiplicity pp events measured recently in the ALICE experiment. Broadening of J/Psi transverse momentum is predicted for high-multiplicity pp collisions.
The so called number of hadron-nucleus collisions n_coll(b) at impact parameter b, and its integral value N_coll, which are used to normalize the measured fractional cross section of a hard process, are calculated within the Glauber-Gribov theory inc
luding the effects of nucleon short-range correlations. The Gribov inelastic shadowing corrections are summed to all orders by employing the dipole representation. Numerical calculations are performed at the energies of the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We found that whereas the Gribov corrections generally increase the value of N_coll, the inclusion of nucleon correlations, acting in the opposite directions, decreases it by a comparable amount. The interplay of the two effects varies with the value of the impact parameter.
