J/ψ inclusive production in νN neutral-current deep-inelastic scattering Original Research Article

We calculate the cross section of J/ψ inclusive production in neutrino–nucleon deep-inelastic scattering via the weak neutral current within the factorization formalism of nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics. Besides J/ψ single production via the Z–gluon fusion mechanism, we also consider J/ψ plus hadron-jet associated production. We take into account both direct production and feed-down from directly-produced heavier charmonia. We present theoretical predictions for the J/ψ transverse-momentum and rapidity distributions, which can be measured in the CHORUS and NOMAD experiments at CERN, including conservative error estimates. In order to interpret a recent CHORUS measurement of the total cross section, we also estimate the contribution due to J/ψ prompt production via diffractive processes using the vector-meson dominance model.