Since their observation in 1974, immediately interpreted as discovery of the cham quark, charmonium states represent powerful tools to investigate fundamental physics.
Their prompt production in pp collisions probes the strong interaction at the interplay of its perturbative and non-perturbative regimes. It can also help to understand a new dynamics of hadron collisions where multiple (hard) parton scatterings take place.
The production of charmonium states in b-hadron decays allows angular analyses to determine their quantum number and question the predictions of the quark model.
In this short workshop we wish to review the theoretical models describing quarkonium production and the recent results from the LHCb experiment in order to prioritize the future measurements and theoretical developments in the field.
From an experimental perspective, we will focus on production studies reconstructing charmonium via decays to hadrons, which are unique to LHCb and which are accessible to a larger number of states and would allow theorists to further test and constrain quarkonium production mechanisms, just like the first ever measurement of prompt eta(c) inclusive hadroproduction by LHCb did.
Relevant reviews are:
- Heavy-flavour and quarkonium production in the LHC era: from proton–proton to heavy-ion collisions [arXiv:1506.03981]
- QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories: challenges and perspectives [arXiv:1404.3723]
- Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities [arXiv:1010.5827]
- Heavy Quarkonium Physics [arXiv:hep-ph/0412158]
