J/psi production at the Tevatron and HERA: the effect of k_T smearing

Abstract

We study the effects of intrinsic transverse momentum smearing on J/psi production both at the Tevatron and at HERA. For the case of large-p_T J/psi production at the Tevatron, the effects due to k_T smearing are mild. On the other hand, inelastic J/psi photoproduction at HERA is very sensitive to the k_T smearing and, in fact, with a reasonable value of <k_T> it is possible to resolve the large-z discrepancy seen by comparing non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD) predictions with the HERA data. We conclude that, with the present kinematic cuts, photoproduction at HERA is not a good test of NRQCD.

Comments: 11 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures, uses epsfig