Inclusive Heavy-Quarkonium Production in Hadronic Collisions

Abstract

We discuss the theory of inclusive production of heavy quarkonium, the comparison between theory and experiment, and the expected nuclear effects in cold nuclear targets. We also present predictions, based on Nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD), for quarkonium production cross sections in the LHC energy range. We find that nuclear effects in the production cross sections are largely independent of the sizes of the NRQCD matrix elements, the charmonium state that is produced and, in the color-octet case, largely independent of the partonic subprocess that produces the heavy quark-antiquark pair.