1 J / ψ Enhancement in Peripheral Pb + Pb Collisions at SPS

Production of J/ψ-mesons in heavy ion collisions is considered within the statistical coalescence model. The charmed quark-antiquark pairs are assumed to be created at the initial stage of the reaction and their number is conserved during the evolution of the system. At the hadronization stage, the charmed (anti)quarks are distributed among open and hidden charm hadrons in accordance with the prescriptions of the statistical mechanics. The model is in excellent agreement with the experimental data for Pb+Pb collisions in a wide centrality range, including the so called ”anomalous“ suppression domain. For the peripheral collisions, however, the model predicts enhanced J/ψ production with respect to the ”normal“ nuclear suppression curve. Typeset using REVTEX