Heavy quarkonium production at collider energies: Partonic cross section and polarization

Abstract

We calculate the ${\cal O}(\alpha_s^3)$ short-distance, QCD collinear-factorized coefficient functions for all partonic channels that include the production of a heavy quark pair at short distances. This provides the first power correction to the collinear-factorized inclusive hadronic production of heavy quarkonia at large transverse momentum, $p_T$, including the full leading-order perturbative contributions to the production of heavy quark pairs in all color and spin states employed in NRQCD treatments of this process. We discuss the role of the first power correction in the production rates and the polarizations of heavy quarkonia in high energy hadronic collisions. The consistency of QCD collinear factorization and non-relativistic QCD factorization applied to heavy quarkonium production is also discussed.