Prompt J/psi production in charged-current deep-inelastic scattering

Abstract

We calculate the cross section of J/psi inclusive production in lepton-nucleon deep-inelastic scattering via the weak charged current within the factorization formalism of nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics. The hadronic system produced in association with the J/psi meson can be of light-quark origin or contain charm. We take into account both direct production and feed-down from directly-produced heavier charmonia. We provide the cross sections of all contributing partonic subprocesses in analytic form. We present theoretical predictions for the J/psi transverse-momentum and rapidity distributions, which can be measured in current neutrino-nucleon scattering experiments at CERN and Fermilab, and possibly at the future electron-proton collider THERA at DESY. We find the cross section to be at the edge of observability at DESY HERA.