Toponium creation in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions

The formation of top quark bound states in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions is investigated. The authors considered U-U and Pb-Pb collisions at energies of 3.5 TeV u-1 and 8 TeV u-1. Relevant quantities of the toponium are calculated within a non-relativistic potential model. The nuclei are treated as clusters of non-interacting nucleons. For the production cross section of the 11S0 toponium state they obtained sigma approximately=150 nb ( sigma approximately=700 nb) at possible LHC (SSC) energies. Additionally they evaluated the formation cross section for free tt pairs.