Double charm production e^+ e^- \to J/\psi + c \bar{c} at B factories with next-to-leading order QCD corrections

Abstract

The inclusive $J/\psi$ production in $e^+ e^- \to J/\psi c\bar c$ at B factories is one of the most challenging open problems in heavy quarkonium physics. The observed cross section of this double charm production process is larger than existing leading order (LO) QCD predictions by a factor of 5. In the nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization formalism, we calculate the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD virtual and real corrections to this process, and find that these corrections can substantially enhance the cross section with a $K$ factor of about 1.8. We further take into account the feeddown contributions from higher charmonium states (mainly the $\psi(2S)$ as well as $\chi_{cJ}$) and the two-photon contributions, and find that the discrepancy between theory and experiment can be largely removed.