On quarkonium in an anisotropic quark gluon plasma

We reconsider a plasma with an anisotropy imposed on the momentum distribution of the system and study the real time static potential for quarkonia. The distribution function is normalised so as to preserve the particle number in an ideal gas, as required in the Keldysh-Schwinger formalism. In contrast to recent findings without this normalisation, a weak anisotropy does not lead to an increase in the melting temperature for bound states. To test for the maximal effect, we also investigate a gluonic medium in the limit of an asymptotically strong anisotropy. The spectral function of quarkonium is calculated for this case and found to be in remarkable agreement with the corresponding results for an isotropic medium.