On multiple scatterings of mesons in hot and cold QCD matter

Abstract We study the propagation of a color singlet q q ¯ pair undergoing multiple scatterings in hot and cold QCD matter. The interaction of the dipole with the nucleus or plasma is described with the McLerran–Venugopalan and Gyulassy–Wang models respectively. We find identical results when expressed in terms of the saturation momentum of either the nucleus or the plasma. We compare two kinds of multiple scatterings, elastic and inelastic with respect to the target. When allowing the target to scatter inelastically, the difference with the elastic case is suppressed by a 1 / N c 2 factor. We also discuss some implications of our results in the following situations: the survival probability of quarkonia in a hot medium, the production of high- p T heavy mesons in nucleus–nucleus collisions, and the production of vector mesons in deep inelastic scattering off nuclei.