Thermal suppression of moving heavy quark pairs in a strongly coupled plasma

Abstract: The imaginary part of the heavy quark-antiquark potential experienced by moving heavy quarkonia in strongly coupled plasmas dual to theories of gravity is computed by considering thermal worldsheet fluctuations of the holographic Nambu-Goto string. General results for a wide class of gravity duals are presented and an explicit formula for Im V_QQ¯ is found in the case where the axis of the moving Q¯Q pair has an arbitrary orientation with respect to its velocity in the plasma. These results are applied to the study of heavy quarkonia propagating through a strongly coupled N=4 SYM plasma. Our results indicate that the onset of Im V_QQ¯ decreases with increasing rapidity (though our analysis is limited to slowly moving quarkonia) and that, in general, a QQ¯ pair is more strongly bound if its axis is aligned with its direction of motion through the strongly coupled plasma.