ENHANCEMENT OF HEAVY QUARKONIUM PRODUCTION IN HADRON-COLLISIONS AT FINITE-TEMPERATURE

We estimate how the masses and wave functions of heavy quarkonium meso ns change with temperature below the deconfining temperature T(C). To do so we use simple, theoretically motivated parametrizations of the w ay the heavy quark potential and quark masses vary with temperature. T he effect of these changes on the production of charmonium and bottoni um in hadron-hadron collisions is estimated using a standard phenomeno logical model. We find, for example, that for T close to T(C) enhancem ents by as much as a factor of 3 are possible for charmonium and botto nium high p(T) production at SPS energies (square-root s = 20 GeV). Th e p(T) and energy dependence of this enhancement is non-trivial. We di scuss the relevance of our results for the interpretation of recent J/ psi data from heavy ion collisions.