In relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC, a quark–gluon plasma (QGP) is created for a short duration of about 10 fm/c. Quarkonia (bound states of \(c\bar{c}\) and \(b\bar{b}\)) are sensitive probes of this phase on length scales comparable to the size of the bound states which are less than 1 fm. Observations of quarkonia in these collisions provide us with a lot of information about how the presence of a QGP affects various quarkonium states. This has motivated the development of the theory of heavy quarks and their bound states in a thermal medium, and its application to the phenomenology of quarkonia in heavy ion collisions. We review some of these developments here.

在 RHIC 和 LHC 的相对论重离子碰撞中，夸克-胶子等离子体 (QGP) 会在约 10 fm/c 的短时间内产生。Quarkonia（\(c\bar{c}\)和\(b\bar{b}\)的束缚态）是该相的敏感探针，其长度尺度与小于 1 fm 的束缚态大小相当. 在这些碰撞中对夸克子的观察为我们提供了大量关于 QGP 的存在如何影响各种夸克子状态的信息。这推动了热介质中重夸克及其束缚态理论的发展，并将其应用于重离子碰撞中夸克现象学。我们在这里回顾了其中的一些发展。