Kinetic description of charmonium production in high-energy nuclear collisions

We study the evolution of charmonia as they collide with the constituents of the fireball produced in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. The latter evolves in a manner controlled by the equation of state as given by lattice QCD, and is constructed in such a way that the observed hadronic spectra are correctly reproduced. A kinetic description of charmonium interactions with both quark-gluon and hadronic degrees of freedom allows us to study in detail the evolution in different regimes, controlled by collision energy, kinematics, and geometry. The data collected at the CERN-SPS accelerator are well described and new estimates for J/ψ production at BNL-RHIC are presented.