Quarkonium suppression in strongly coupled plasmas*

Suppression of quarkonia in heavy-ion collisions is among the most informative probes of quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Interpreting the full wealth of data obtained from the collision events requires a precise theoretical understanding of the evolution of heavy quarks and quarkonia as they propagate through strongly coupled plasma. Such calculations require the evaluation of a gauge-invariant correlator of chromoelectric fields. This chromoelectric correlator encodes all the properties of QGP that the dissociation and recombination dynamics of quarkonium are sensitive to, which is to say can in principle measure. We have studied it at weak coupling in QCD up to next-to-leading order and at strong coupling in N=4 SYM, and formulated it in Euclidean QCD, paving the way for a lattice QCD calculation of it. Finally, we report on recent progress in applying our results to the calculation of the final quarkonium abundances after propagating through a cooling droplet of QGP, which illustrates how we may learn about QGP from quarkonium measurements. We devote special attention to how the presence of a strongly coupled plasma introduces new features to the transport description of quarkonium.