Extracting color octet NRQCD matrix elements from $J/\psi$ production at the EIC

Abstract

Recently unpolarized and polarized $J/\psi \,(\Upsilon)$ production at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) has been proposed as a new way to extract two poorly known color-octet NRQCD long-distance matrix elements: $\langle0\vert{\cal O}_{8}^{J/\psi}(^{1}S_{0})\vert0\rangle$ and $\langle0\vert{\cal O}_{8}^{J/\psi}(^{3}P_{0})\vert0\rangle$. The proposed method is based on a comparison to open heavy-quark pair production ideally performed at the same kinematics. In this paper we analyze this proposal in more detail and provide predictions for the EIC based on the available determinations of the color-octet matrix elements. We also propose two additional methods that do not require comparison to open heavy-quark pair production.