Azimuthal asymmetry of J / ψ suppression in non-central heavy-ion collisions

Abstract The azimuthal asymmetry of J / ψ suppression in non-central heavy-ion collisions is studied within a dynamic model of J / ψ suppression in a deconfined partonic medium. Within this model, J / ψ suppression in heavy-ion collisions is caused mainly by the initial state nuclear absorption and dissociation via gluon- J / ψ scattering in deconfined partonic medium. Only the second mechanism gives arise to azimuthal asymmetry of the final J / ψ production. We demonstrate that if there is an onset of suppression by quark–gluon plasma (QGP) in the NA50 data, it must be accompanied by the non-vanishing azimuthal asymmetry. Using the same critical density above which the QGP effect enters, we predict the azimuthal asymmetric coefficient v 2 as well as the survival probability for J / ψ at the RHIC energy.