1994/06/25 by Pankaj Jain, Jain, Pankaj, John P. Ralston +1
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-ph/9406394
26 pages, 15 figures (not included, hard copy available upon request), report # KANSAS 94-5-22
arxiv created 1994/06/25 · openalex publication_date 1994/06/25 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the energy and nuclear A dependence of the hadronic production of heavy quarkonia. We review theoretical ideas which have been put forward, seeking a consistent global picture reconciling the large effects in quarkonia with the small nuclear effects observed in continuum Drell Yan production. The data indicates that shadowing or leading twist modifications of parton distributions can be ruled out as explanations, leaving higher twist energy loss. From general principles the maximum allowed energy loss of partons traversing the nuclear medium can be related to the parton transverse momenta. We then show that the experimental data on nuclear suppression of charm- and bottom- onium for large xF is consistent with this effect: using the observed transverse momenta to bound the xF dependence in an almost model independent manner generates a relation that practically reproduces the data. Several prediction are discussed; the dependence on xF as xF→ 1, and large and small kT2 cuts, can be used to discriminate between quark and gluon induced effects.