arXiv · 2509.12842
Observation of charmonium sequential suppression in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Abstract
We report measurements of charmonium sequential suppression in Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}$ = 200 GeV with the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The inclusive yield ratio of $\psi$(2S) to J/$\psi$ as a function of transverse momentum is reported, along with the centrality dependence of the double ratio, defined as the $\psi$(2S) to J/$\psi$ ratio in heavy-ion collisions relative to that in $p$+$p$ collisions. In the 0-80% centrality class, the double ratio is found to be 0.41 $\pm$ 0.10 (stat) $\pm$ 0.03 (syst) $\pm$ 0.02 (ref), lower than unity with a significance of 5.6 standard deviations. This provides experimental evidence that $\psi$(2S) is significantly more suppressed than J/$\psi$ in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC. This sequential suppression pattern seems to increase from peripheral to central collisions, but with no significant dependence on the transverse momentum.
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STAR Collaboration, B. E. Aboona, J. Adam, L. Adamczyk, I. Aggarwal, M. M. Aggarwal, Z. Ahammed, A. K. Alshammri, E. C. Aschenauer, S. Aslam, J. Atchison, V. Bairathi, X. Bao, P. Barik, K. Barish, S. Behera, R. Bellwied, P. Bhagat, A. Bhasin, S. Bhatta, S. R. Bhosale, J. Bielcik, J. Bielcikova, J. D. Brandenburg, C. Broodo, X. Z. Cai, H. Caines, M. Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, D. Cebra, J. Ceska, I. Chakaberia, P. Chaloupka, Y. S. Chang, Z. Chang, A. Chatterjee, D. Chen, J. H. Chen, Q. Chen, W. Chen, Z. Chen, J. Cheng, Y. Cheng, W. Christie, X. Chu, S. Corey, H. J. Crawford, M. Csanád, G. Dale-Gau, A. Das, D. De Souza Lemos, I. M. Deppner, A. Deshpande, A. Dhamija, A. Dimri, P. Dixit, X. Dong, J. L. Drachenberg, E. Duckworth, J. C. Dunlop, Y. S. El-Feky, J. Engelage, G. Eppley, S. Esumi, O. Evdokimov, O. Eyser, B. Fan, Y. Fang, R. Fatemi, S. Fazio, H. Feng, Y. Feng, E. Finch, Y. Fisyak, F. A. Flor, C. Fu, T. Fu, C. A. Gagliardi, T. Galatyuk, T. Gao, Y. Gao, G. Garcia, F. Geurts, A. Gibson, A. Giri, K. Gopal, X. Gou, D. Grosnick, A. Gu, J. Gu, A. Gupta, W. Guryn, A. Hamed, R. J. Hamilton, J. Han, X. Han, S. Harabasz, M. D. Harasty, J. W. Harris, H. Harrison-Smith, L. B. Havener. 2025-09-16. Observation of charmonium sequential suppression in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. https://doi.org/10.1103/ghzh-kv8z
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