Enhanced J/$\Psi$ Production in Deconfined Quark Matter

In high energy heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the initial production of heavy quarks will for the first time yield multiple pairs of cbar c (at RHIC) and both cbar c and bbar b (at LHC) in each central event. If a region of deconfined quarks and gluons is subsequently formed, a new mechanism for the formation of heavy quarkonium bound states will be activated. This will result from the mobility of heavy quarks in the deconfined region, such that bound states can be formed from a quark and an antiquark which were originally produced in separate incoherent interactions. Model estimates of this effect for J/psi production at RHIC indicate that enhancements of an order of magnitude or more are to be expected. Experimental observation of such enhanced production would provide evidence for deconfinement unlikely to be compatible with competing scenarios.