In this paper we study the real-time evolution of heavy quarkonium in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) on the basis of the open quantum systems approach. In particular, we shed light on how quantum dissipation affects the dynamics of the relative motion of the quarkonium state over time. To this end we present a novel non-equilibrium master equation for the relative motion of quarkonium in a medium, starting from Lindblad operators derived systematically from quantum field theory. In order to implement the corresponding dynamics, we deploy the well established quantum state diffusion method. In turn we reveal how the full quantum evolution can be cast in the form of a stochastic non-linear Schrödinger equation. This for the first time provides a direct link from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) to phenomenological models based on nonlinear Schrödinger equations. Proof of principle simulations in one-dimension show that dissipative effects indeed allow the relative motion of the constituent quarks in a quarkonium at rest to thermalize. Dissipation turns out to be relevant already at early times well within the QGP lifetime in relativistic heavy ion collisions.
I. INTRODUCTIONOver the past decades, properties of nuclear matter in extreme conditions have been vigorously studied both experimentally and theoretically.At modern collider facilities, such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), heavy nuclei are collided at ultrarelativistic energy to create a multiparticle system in the collision center, endowed with an extremely high energy density.A multitude of measurements suggest that the energy densities reached are high enough that a new phase of nuclear matter, the "quark-gluon plasma (QGP)" is realized [1-3].On the theory side significant progress has been made in understanding the thermodynamic, i.e. static properties of the QGP at the temperatures reached in heavy ion collisions at which QCD dynamics is still nonperturbative. Lattice QCD simulations have played a central role in this regard shedding light on e.g. the crossover transition temperature [4,5], the physics of static screening in QCD [6,7] and the equilibrium spectral properties of heavy *