Two decades ago Matsui and Satz suggested that Debye screening in the quark-gluon plasma would result in J/ψ suppression in heavy ion collisions. Much has happened in the subsequent years, and the picture of quark-gluon plasma at present is rapidly evolving – what does it imply for the J/ψ suppression? What are the recent RHIC and SPS results trying to tell us? What else has to be done? This ta...

Assuming that ρ -mesons exist in a quark-gluon plasma at temperatures close to the QCD phase transition, we calculate the dilepton production rate from q-q̄ annihilation via a ρ -meson state using Vector Meson Dominance. The result is compared to the rates from direct q-q̄ annihilation and from π-π annihilation. Furthermore we discuss the suppression of low mass dileptons if the quarks assume an ...

Quenched lattice data for the QQ̄ interaction (in terms of heavy quark free energies) in the color singlet channel at finite temperatures are fitted and used within the nonrelativistic Schrödinger equation formalism to obtain binding energies and scattering phase shifts for the lowest eigenstates in the charmonium and bottomonium systems in a hot gluon plasma. The partial dissociation rate due t...

Within the real-time formalism (RTF) of thermal field theory, we apply the hard thermal loop (HTL) resummation technique to calculating effective two-loop thermodynamic potential in quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and its renormalization. The result with collective effects is obtained, which is valid for an arbitrary number of quark flavors with masses. Keyword: quark-gluon plasma (QGP); finite temper...

We estimate the survival probability of J/ψ in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, using both short-distance QCD and nuclear absorption mechanism. The suppression is found to be almost 100 percent for a thermally equilibrating quark-gluon plasma. The measurement of such a huge suppression of J/ψ may suggest the existence of a deconfined partonic medium, possibly a thermalised quark-gluon plasma,...

Data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider over the last five years has led many to conclude that the medium created is not the expected quark gluon plasma (QGP), but rather a strongly coupled or strongly interacting quark gluon plasma (sQGP). We explore the meaning of this possible paradigm shift and the experimental and theoretical arguments that are associated with it. In this proceedings...

It has been predicted that dilepton production may be used as a quark-gluon plasma probe. We calculate the rapidity distributions of thermal dileptons produced by an evolving quark-gluon plasma assuming a longitudinal scaling expansion with initial conditions locally determined from the hadronic rapidity density. These distributions are compared with Drell-Yan production and semileptonic charm ...

By studying the properties of matter during heavy-ion collisions, a better understanding of the Quark-Gluon plasma is possible. One of the main areas of this study is the calculation of the magnetic field, particularly how the values of conductivity affects this field and how the field strength changes with proper time. In matching the theoretical calculations with results obtained in lab, two diffe...

The present status of the heavy-ion program to search for quark-gluon plasma is reviewed. The goal of this program is to recreate the Big Bang in the laboratory, by generating small chunks of exploding quark-gluon plasma (“The Little Bang”). I argue that the analogues of the three pillars of Big Bang Theory (Hubble flow, microwave background radiation, and primordial nucleosynthesis) have now b...