Speaker
Description
We present a unified open quantum system framework for the description of heavy quarkonium in QCD matter, connecting in-medium spectral properties, dynamical evolution, and recombination processes within a single consistent approach. Starting from a complex heavy-quark potential, whose real and imaginary parts encode binding and in-medium dissociation effects, we construct spectral functions that capture the temperature-dependent modification and eventual melting of quarkonium states.
The dynamical evolution of the heavy quark–antiquark pair is then formulated in terms of a Lindblad equation, allowing for a systematic treatment of decoherence, dissociation, and stochastic transitions induced by the quark-gluon plasma. This provides a physically motivated description of recombination, in which the formation probability of bound states is controlled by the deviation from equilibrium.
This approach establishes a dynamical bridge between initial-state conditions and final quarkonium yields, offering a common language to relate the non-equilibrium production of heavy quarks, as probed at the Electron-Ion Collider, to their subsequent evolution and hadronization in the hot medium created at the LHC.