J/psi Production at the LHC

Abstract

We firstly re-examine hadroproduction of prompt J/psi's at the Fermilab Tevatron finding that those colour-octet matrix elements presented in literature are systematically overestimated due to the overlooking of the effective primordial transverse momentum of partons (i.e. dynamically generated via initial-state radiation). We estimate the size of these effects using different parton distribution functions in a Monte Carlo framework. Finally, we extrapolate up to LHC energies making a prediction on the expected pt differential cross-section for charmonium.