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Last year the E866-group of the Fermilab measured the xF dependence of J/Psi and 2 suppression in pA collisions. We discuss two of the effects found in that experiment with regard to color coherence effects: the di erent suppression of the J/Psi and the 2 at xF < 0 and the significant suppression of both at large xF . The small xF regions is dominated by fully formed charmonium states and thus enables us to discuss the formation time and the cross section of the different charmonium states. In the large xF region the interaction of the charmonium states with nuclear matter has to be described by partonic degrees of freedom, because in that kinematic domain the formation time is much larger than the nuclear radii. The understanding of this region will be crucial for the interpretation of the data of the future heavy ion colliders RHIC and LHC.
We discuss the new data for the production of the psi meson in pA collisions at 450 GeV at CERNSPS (of the NA50-collaboration) [1]. We extract from the CERN data sigma(psi'N) 8 mb under the assumption that the psi is produced as a result of the space-time evolution of a point-like c¯c pair which expands with time to the full size of the charmonium state. In the analysis we assume the existence of a relationship between the distribution of color in a hadron and the cross section of its interaction with a nucleon. However, our result is rather sensitive to the pattern of the expansion of the wave packet and significantly larger values of sigma(psi'N)are not ruled out by the data. We show that recent CERN data confirm the suggestion of ref. [2] that color fluctuations of the strengths in charmonium-nucleon interaction are the major source of suppression of the J/psi yield as observed at CERN in both pA and AA collisions.