Revisiting relativistic corrections to inclusive $J/\psi$ production at B factories: Complete expansion for three-body quarkonium production

Abstract

We revisit the calculations of relativistic corrections to inclusive $J/\psi$ production at B factories. For quark-level subprocesses with three-body final states, we carry out a full expansion of the final-state kinematic parameters. The resulting cross sections are theoretically self-consistent and independent of the choice of integration variables. In the high-energy limit, both cross-section magnitudes and the line shapes of correction curves for energy and momentum distributions agree remarkably well with fragmentation-function calculations. We find that $\mathcal{O}(v^2)$ corrections suppress the cross section by roughly $14.55\%$ in the $J/\psi + X_{c\bar{c}}$ channel and enhance it by approximately $12.18\%$ for the $J/\psi + X_{\text{non-}c\bar{c}}$ channel. After incorporating published $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s)$ corrections, color-octet contributions, two-photon production channels, and feed-down effects, tension persists between theoretical predictions and experimental measurements. This indicates that complete prompt-quarkonium calculations through $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s, v^2)$, or evaluations incorporating higher-order corrections, are required to resolve this tension.