Quarkonium Polarization in Non-relativistic QCD and the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

We examine angular distributions of leptons arising from the decay of J/psi in inclusive hadroproduction. Taking into account feed-down contributions from chi_{1,2}, a flat distribution emerges without fine tuning parameters. Changes in the ratio of direct to total J/psi cross sections would change this distribution significantly. Such angular distributions are, therefore, confirmatory tests of the J/psi suppression signal for the production of a quark-gluon plasma. Related effects are predicted for the Upsilon.

Comments: 20 pages including 3 eps figures, LaTeX source