A QCD space-time analysis of quarkonium formation and evolution in hadronic collisions

Abstract

The production of heavy quarkonium as QQbar bound-states in hadron-hadron collisions is considered within the framework of a space-time description, combining parton-cascade evolution with a coalescence model for bound-state formation. The `hard' production of the initial QQbar, directly or via gluon fragmentation and including both color-singlet and color-octet contributions, is calculated from the PQCD cross-sections. The subsequent development of the QQbar system is described within a space-time generalization of the DGLAP parton-evolution formalism in position- and momentum-space. The actual formation of the bound-states is accomplished through overlap of the QQbar pair and a spectrum of quarkonium wave-functions. This coalescence can only occur after sufficent gluon radiation reduces the QQbar relative velocity to a value commensurate with the non-relativistic kinematics of these bound systems. The presence of gluon participants in the cascade then is both necessary and leads to the natural inclusion of both color-singlet and color-octet mechanisms. The application of this approach to pp (ppbar) collisions from sqrt(s)= 30 GeV - 14 TeV reveals very decent agreement with available data from ISR and Tevatron - without the necessity of introducing fit parameters. Moreover, production probabilities are calculated for a complete spectrum of charmonium and bottonium states, with the relative significance compared to open charm (bottom) production. An analysis of the space-time development is carried through which sheds light on the relevance of gluon radiation and color-structure, suggesting a correponding experimental investigation.