Heavy quark potential and quarkonia dissociation rates

Quenched lattice data for the Q (Q) over bar Q interaction (in terms of heavy quark free energies) in the color-singlet channel at finite temperatures are fitted and used within the non-relativistic Schrodinger equation formalism to obtain binding energies and scattering phase shifts for the lowest eigenstates in the charmonium and bottomonium systems in a hot gluon plasma. The partial dissociation rate due to the Bhanot-Peskin process is calculated using different assumptions for the gluon distribution function, including free massless gluons, massive gluons, and massive damped gluons. It is demonstrated that a temperature dependent gluon mass has an essential influence on the heavy quarkonia dissociation, but that this process alone is insufficient to describe the heavy quarkonia dissociation rates.