Recent Developments in Heavy Quark and Quarkonium Production

Thomas Mehen

Published 2003-12-17, updated 2003-12-19Version 2

Recent measurements of J/psi production in e^+ e^- colliders pose a challenge to the NRQCD factorization theorem for quarkonium production. Discrepancies between leading order calculations of color-octet contributions and the momentum distribution of J/psi observed by Belle and BaBar are resolved by resumming large perturbative and nonperturbative corrections that are enhanced near the kinematic endpoint. The large cross sections for J/psi + c + \bar c and double quarkonium production remain poorly understood. Nonperturbative effects in fixed-target hadroproduction of open charm are also discussed. Large asymmetries in the production of charm mesons and baryons probe nonperturbative corrections to the QCD factorization theorem. A power correction called heavy-quark recombination can economically explain these asymmetries with a few universal parameters.