Non-perturbative Quarkonium Dissociation in Hadronic Matter

Abstract

We calculate the dissociation rates of quarkonium ground states by tunnelling and direct thermal activation to the continuum. For hadronic matter at temperatures $T\le 0.2$ GeV, neither of these mechanisms leads to a sufficiently large dissociation to explain the experimentally observed suppression of charmonium. Dissociation by sequential excitation to excited energy levels, although OZI-forbidden, requires further analysis.

Comments: 8 pages, plain TeX, 2 figures available upon request