The spin-orbit potential and Poincaré invariance in finite temperature pNRQCD

Abstract

Heavy quarkonium at finite temperature has been the subject of intense theoretical studies, for it provides a potentially clean probe of the quark-gluon plasma. Recent studies have made use of effective field theories to exploit in a systematic manner the hierarchy of energy scales that characterize the system. In the case of a quarkonium in a medium whose temperature is smaller than the typical momentum transfer in the bound state but larger than its energy, the suitable effective field theory is pNRQCD_HTL, where degrees of freedom with energy or momentum larger than the binding energy have been integrated out. Thermal effects are expected to break Poincar_s14e invariance, which, at zero temperature, manifests itself in a set of exact relations between the matching coefficients of the effective field theory. In the paper, we evaluate the leading-order thermal corrections to the spin-orbit potentials of pNRQCD_HTL and show that Poincar_s14e invariance is indeed violated.