Charmonium production in hadronic experiments at an energy of 70 GeV

The production of charmonium states in hadronic experiments is considered in the third order in the strong-coupling constant. It is shown that some significant difficulties that arise if such reactions are treated in the leading order can be overcome within this approach. In particular, the method applied here makes it possible to obtain transverse-momentum distributions of final-state charmonia. Also, the experimental observation of a χ _c1 meson, which cannot be produced in the lowest order in α _s , is then explained in a natural way.