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.
We calculate the cross section and single-spin azimuthal asymmetry, A_n(t) for inclusive neutron production in pp collisions at forward rapidities relative to the polarized proton. Absorptive corrections to the pion pole generate a relative phase bet
ween the spin-flip and non-flip amplitudes, which leads to an appreciable spin asymmetry. However, the asymmetry observed recently in the PHENIX experiment at RHIC at very small |t|~0.01GeV^2 cannot be explained by this mechanism.
We calculate absorptive corrections to single pion exchange in the production of leading neutrons in pp collisions. Contrary to the usual procedure of convolving the survival probability with the cross section, we apply corrections to the spin amplit
udes. The non-flip amplitude turns out to be much more suppressed by absorption than the spin-flip one. We identify the projectile proton Fock state responsible for the absorptive corrections as a color octet-octet 5-quarks configuration. Calculations within two very different models, color-dipole light-cone description, and in hadronic representation, lead to rather similar absorptive corrections. We found a much stronger damping of leading neutrons than in some of previous estimates. Correspondingly, the cross section is considerably smaller than was measured at ISR. However, comparison with recent measurements by the ZEUS collaboration of neutron production in deep-inelastic scattering provides a strong motivation for challenging the normalization of the ISR data. This conjecture is also supported by preliminary data from the NA49 experiment for neutron production in pp collisions at SPS.
