Spin alignment of quarkonia in vortical quark-gluon plasma

Abstract: The spin alignment of $J/\psi$ with respect to event plane in relativistic heavy ion collisions exhibits a significant signal. We propose a possible mechanism for spin alignment through spin dependent dissociation of quarkonia in a vortical quark-gluon plasma. The spin dependent dissociation is realized through inelastic scattering between constituents of quarkonium and those of quark-gluon plasma polarized by the vorticity. The spin dependent dissociation rate is found to depend on the directions of vorticity, quantization axis, and quark momentum. We implement our results in a dissociation dominated evolution model for quarkonia in the Bjorken flow, finding the spin $0$ state is slightly suppressed compared to the average of the other two, which is consistent with the sign found in experiments. We also find absence of logarithmic enhancement in binding energy in the vortical correction to dissociation rate, which is understood from the requirement that a spin dependent dissociation can only come from quark coupling to a pair of chromomagnetic and chromoelectric field.