Next-to-leading-order study of J/ψ angular distributions in e+e− → J/ψ + ηc, χcJ at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ ≈ 10.6 GeV

In this paper, we present a detailed next-to-leading-order (NLO) study of J/ψ angular distributions in e+e− → J/ψ + ηc, χcJ (J = 0, 1, 2) within the nonrelativistic QCD factorization (NRQCD). The numerical NLO expressions for total and differential cross sections, i.e., $$ \frac{d\sigma}{d\cos \theta } $$ = A + B cos2 θ, are both derived. With the inclusion of the newly-calculated QCD corrections to A and B, the αθ (= B/A) parameters in J/ψ + χc0 and J/ψ + χc1 are moderately enhanced, while the magnitude of αθJ/ψ+χc2 is significantly reduced; regarding the production of J/ψ + ηc, the αθ value remains unchanged. By comparing with experiment, we find the predicted αθJ/ψ+ηc is in good agreement with the Belle measurement; however, αθJ/ψ+χc0 is still totally incompatible with the experimental result, and this discrepancy seems to hardly be cured by proper choices of the charm-quark mass, the renormalization scale, and the NRQCD matrix elements.