In-Medium Formation of J/Psi as a Probe of Charm Quark Thermalization

Charmonium formation via charm quark in‐medium recombination in heavy ion interactions at collider energies has the potential to probe some properties of the medium by utilizing the sensitivity of the recombination process to the momentum distribution of the quarks. We have examined the transverse momentum spectra of J/ψ, characterized by 〈pT2〉, which result from the formation process in which the charm quark distributions are unchanged from their initial production in a pQCD process. This is contrasted with the case in which the charm quarks have completely come into thermal equilibrium with an expanding medium whose properties are determined by the spectra of produced light hadrons. We find that the resulting 〈pT2〉 of the formed J/ψ provide a distinct signature of the underlying charm quark spectra, and that signature is essentially independent of the detailed dynamics of the in‐medium formation reaction. In addition, both of these signatures are sufficiently separated from the case in which no in‐mediu...