Charmonia at Finite Momentum and Spatial Correlators in Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

Spatial correlation functions of quarkonia in the quark-gluon plasma are available from finite- temperature lattice-QCD with good precision. However, their interpretation in terms of microscopic spectral functions has been challenging due to a highly oscillating momentum integral in their Fourier transform and the need for a reliable evaluation of their 3-momentum dependence. Utilizing the thermodynamic T-matrix approach we first obtain a Lorentz-covariant scattering equation by taking advantage of a separable-potential approximation. Medium effects are included through state-of-the- art heavy-quark selfenergies and a potential screening which we constrain by euclidean correlators from lattice QCD. In addition to the usual two-particle cut in the scattering equation we also include particle-hole excitations, also referred to as zero mode. We find that both the increase of euclidean correlators with 3-momentum and the suppression of the spatial correlators found in lattice-QCD can be qualitatively reproduced, with the zero mode playing an essential role for the former but not for the latter.