Thermalization of bottomonium in the quark-gluon plasma
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: A bstract We study the approach to equilibrium of bottomonium in the quark-gluon plasma within the open quantum system framework. We perform large-scale simulations of the long-time behavior in three dimensions using the quantum trajectory method to observe the emergence of steady states and determine the timescale of thermalization in position-, angular-momentum-, and color-space. We find that the thermalization timescale increases with decreasing temperature and decreasing coupling to the medium, which is given by transport coefficients of the medium. Additionally, we observe that the steady states exhibit small corrections to the Gibbs state due to medium interactions and show that these corrections diminish for weaker medium coupling and higher temperature. At a temperature of 450 MeV, quarkonium relaxes to a state that is approximately thermal, with the most significant correction being a smaller overlap of the 1 S state with respect to the Gibbs state. We compare these findings with the master equation obtained at leading order in the expansion of the binding energy over the temperature, which we find to have a trivial steady state.
Source: Journal of High Energy Physics
Authors: Nora Brambilla, Tom Magorsch, Antonio Vairo
Institution: Technical University of Munich
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Awards: G1897041155, G3277345812
OpenAlex ID: W7147067554