Mass modification of D-meson at finite density in QCD sum rule

We evaluate the mass shift of isospin-averaged D-meson in the nuclear medium. Borel-transformed QCD sum rules are used to describe an interaction between the D-meson and a nucleon by taking into account all the lowest dimension-4 operators in the operator product expansion (OPE). We find at normal matter density the D-meson mass shift is about 10 times (similar to 50 MeV) larger than that of J/psi. This originates from the fact that the dominant contribution in the OPE for the D-meson is the nucleon matrix element of m(c)(q) over bar q, where m(c) is the charm-quark mass and q denotes light quarks. We also discuss that the mass shift of the D-meson in nuclear matter may cause the level crossings of the charmonium states and the D (D) over bar threshold. This suggests an additional mechanism of the J/psi suppression in high energy heavy-ion collisions. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.