  Properties of bottomonia (Upsilon, chi_b and Upsilon') in the Quark-Gluon
Plasma (QGP) are investigated by assessing inelastic reaction rates and their
interplay with open-bottom states (b-quarks or B-mesons) and color-screening.
The latter leads to vanishing quarkonium binding energies at sufficiently high
temperatures (close to the dissolution point), which, in particular, renders
standard gluo-dissociation, g+Upsilon -> b + b-bar, inefficient due to a
substantial reduction in final-state phase space. This problem is overcome by
invoking a "quasifree" destruction mechanism, g,q,q-bar + Upsilon -> g,q,q-bar
+ b + b-bar, as previously introduced for charmonia. The pertinent reaction
rates are implemented into a kinetic theory framework to evaluate the time
evolution of bottomonia in heavy-ion reactions at RHIC and LHC within an
expanding fireball model. While bottom quarks are assumed to be exclusively
produced in primordial nucleon-nucleon collisions, their thermal relaxation
times in the QGP, which importantly figure into Upsilon-formation rates, are
estimated according to a recent Fokker-Planck treatment. Predictions for the
centrality dependence of Upsilon production are given for upcoming experiments
at RHIC and LHC. At both energies, Upsilon suppression turns out to be the
prevalent effect.

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;Nuclear Experiment;Nuclear Theory