$J/\psi$ suppression in heavy ion collsions and the QCD phase transition

Abstract

We suggest that the new regime of $J/\psi$ suppression in Pb-Pb collisions found by the NA50 experiment at CERN is the result of non-trivial space-time evolution due to specific behavior of the Equation of State (EOS) near the QCD phase transition. We also study another suppression channel, the conversion of $J/\psi$ into ${\eta }_c$ during the late cool hadronic stage, and find it rather inefficient.

Comments: 10 pages, 3 figures