B_c-meson production in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions

We study quantitatively the formation and evolution of b̄c, bc̄ bound states in a space-time domain of deconfined quarks and gluons (quark-gluon plasma, QGP). At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), one expects for the first time that typical central collisions will result in multiple pairs of heavy (in this case charmed) quarks. This provides a new mechanism for the formation of heavy quarkonia which depends on the properties of the deconfined region. We find typical enhancements of about 500-fold for the b̄c, bc̄ production yields over expectations from the elementary coherent hadronic B_c-meson production scenario. The final population of bound states may serve as a probe of the plasma phase parameters.