Effects of Final-State Interaction and Screening on Strange- and Heavy-Quark Production

Abstract

Final-state interaction and screening have a great influence on $q\bar{q}$ production cross sections, which are important quantities in many problems in quark-gluon plasma physics. They lead to an enhancement of the cross section for a $q\bar{q}$ color-singlet state and a suppression for a color-octet state. The effects are large near the production threshold. The presence of screening gives rise to resonances for $q\bar{q}$ production just above the threshold at specific plasma temperatures. These resonances, especially $c\bar{c}$ and $b\bar{b}$ resonances, may be utilized to search for the quark-gluon plasma by studying the temperature dependence of heavy-quark pair production just above the threshold.

Comments: 12 pages (Latex), 6 figures. Invited talk presented at Strangeness'96 Meeting, Budapest, May 1996. To be published in "Heavy-Ion Physics"