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Complex heavy quarkonium potential in an anisotropic collisional quark-gluon plasma

Manas Debnath1, Lata Thakur2, and Najmul Haque1,*

  • *Contact author: nhaque@niser.ac.in
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 034052 – Published 25 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cbbm-417f

Abstract

We compute the complex heavy-quark potential in an anisotropic quark-gluon plasma (QGP) using kinetic theory with a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook collision kernel. By incorporating momentum anisotropy and a finite collision rate into the medium dielectric response, we derive both the real and the imaginary parts of the in-medium potential. The real part of the inverse dielectric function is obtained from the retarded/advanced gluon propagator, while the imaginary part is determined from the Feynman (symmetric) propagator. We find that collisions have only a minimal impact on the real part of the potential, suggesting a similarly weak effect on the binding energy. In an anisotropic plasma, the Weibel instability induces a pinch singularity that can render the imaginary part of the potential ill-defined; we show that sufficiently large collision rates regularize this singularity, yielding a well-defined imaginary potential in the corresponding region of parameter space. In this well-defined regime, collisions significantly enhance the magnitude of the imaginary part and modify the effect of anisotropy. This enhancement leads to larger quarkonium thermal widths and dissociation rates in a nonequilibrium QGP, providing further insight into quarkonium suppression mechanisms.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 034052– Published 25 August, 2026
  • Received 21 April 2025
  • Accepted 7 August 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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