Abstract
The PHENIX Collaboration has measured the ratio of the yields of to mesons produced in , , , and collisions at GeV over the forward and backward rapidity intervals . We find that the ratio in collisions is consistent with measurements at other collision energies. In collisions with nuclei, we find that in the forward (-going or -going) direction, the relative yield of mesons to mesons is consistent with the value measured in collisions. However, in the backward (nucleus-going) direction, the meson is preferentially suppressed by a factor of . This suppression is attributed in some models to the breakup of the weakly bound meson through final-state interactions with comoving particles, which have a higher density in the nucleus-going direction. These breakup effects may compete with color screening in a deconfined quark-gluon plasma to produce sequential suppression of excited quarkonia states.
- Received 23 September 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.95.034904
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