Factorized power expansion for high- pt heavy quarkonium production

We show that when the factorized cross section for heavy quarkonium production includes next-to-leading power contributions associated with the production of the heavy quark pair at short distances, it naturally reproduces all high pT results calculated in nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization. This extended formalism requires fragmentation functions for heavy quark pairs, as well as for light partons. When these fragmentation functions are themselves calculated using NRQCD, we find that two of the four leading NRQCD production channels, S31[1] and S10[8], are dominated by the next-to-leading power contributions for a very wide pT range. The large next-to-leading order corrections of NRQCD are absorbed into the leading order of the first power correction. The impact of this finding on heavy quarkonium production and its polarization is discussed.