NRQCD factorization and universality of NRQCD matrix elements

Abstract

The approach of nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization was proposed to study inclusive production of a quarkonium. It is widely used and successful. However, a recent study of gluon fragmentation into a quarkonium at two-loop level shows that the factorization is broken. It is suggested that the color-octet NRQCD matrix elements should be modified by adding a gauge link to restore the factorization. The modified matrix elements may have extra soft-divergences at one-loop level which the unmodified cannot have, and this can lead to a violation of the universality of these matrix elements. In this letter, we examine in detail the NRQCD factorization for inclusive quarkonium production in e + e − annihilation at one-loop level. Our results show that the factorization can be made without the modification of NRQCD matrix elements and it can also be made for relativistic corrections. It turns out that the suggested gauge link will not lead to nonzero contributions to color-octet NRQCD matrix elements at one-loop level and at any order of v. Therefore the universality holds at least at one-loop level.