Coherence time effects on J/psi production and suppression in relativisticheavy ion collisions - art. no. 024901

Using a coherence time extracted from high precision proton-nucleus Drell-Y an measurements and a nuclear absorption cross section extracted from pA ch armonium production experiments, we study J/psi production and absorption i n nucleus-nucleus collisions. We find that coherence time effects are large enough to affect the measured J/psi -to-Drell-Yan ratio. The S+U data at 2 00A GeV/c measured by NA38 are reproduced quantitatively without the introd uction of any new parameters. However, when compared with recent NA50 measu rements for Pb+Pb at 158A GeV/c,the data is not reproduced in trend or in m agnitude.