Fluctuations of the transverse energy in Pb+Pb collisions and J/psi suppression

Abstract

The observed J/psi suppression in Pb+Pb collisions shows a drop at those large values of the transverse energy E_T which arise from fluctuations. The validity of existing models for J/psi suppression can be extended into this domain of E_T by introducing an ad hoc factor proportional to E_T. We propose a formalism in which the influence of E_T fluctuations on the J/psi suppression can be calculated and discuss the conditions under which the ad hoc factor is obtained.

Comments: 10 pages LaTeX, 2 postscript figures, revised version with several changes and additions