The growing consensus that a strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) has been observed at the SPS and RHIC experiments suggests a different framework for examining heavy-quark dynamics. We present both a semianalytical treatment of Fokker-Planck (FP) evolution in pedagogical examples and numerical Langevin simulations of evolving $c\overline{c}$ pairs on top of a hydrodynamically expanding fireball. In this way, we may conclude that the survival probability of bound charmonia states is greater than previously estimated, as the spatial equilibration of pairs proceeds through a “slowly dissolving lump” stage related to the pair interaction.

• Received 22 September 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.79.034907