Quarkonium suppression as a probe of a saturated gluon plasma?

A dense parton system is expected to be formed in the early stage of relati vistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies and above. The probability of a quark-gluon plasma production and the resulting strength of its signature s depends strongly on the initial conditions associated to the distribution s of partons in the nuclear wave functions. At very high energies, the grow th of par-ton distributions should saturate, possibly forming a Color Glass Condensate, which is characterized by a bulk momentum scale Q(s). As a dir ect consequence, the possible signatures of the QGP should be Q(s)-dependen t if the saturation scenario is valid for RHIC and LHC. In this Letter we a ssume the saturation scenario for the QGP formation and estimate the satura tion scale dependence of quarkonium suppression. We conclude that, if this scenario is valid, the Y suppression only occurs at large values of Q(s). ( C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.