Gluon Fragmentation into P-wave Heavy Quarkonium

The fragmentation functions for gluons to split into P-wave heavy quarkonium states are calculated to leading order in the QCD coupling constant. Long-distance effects are factored into two nonperturbative parameters: the derivative of the radial wavefunction at the origin and a second parameter related to the probability for a heavy-quark-antiquark pair that is produced in a color-octet S-wave state to form a color-singlet P-wave bound state. The fragmentation probabilities for a high transverse momentum gluon to split into the P-wave charmonium states $\chi_{c0}$, $\chi_{c1}$, and $\chi_{c2}$ are estimated to be $0.4 \times 10^{-4}$, $1.8 \times 10^{-4}$, and $2.4 \times 10^{-4}$, respectively. This fragmentation process may account for a significant fraction of the rate for the inclusive production of $\chi_{cJ}$ at large transverse momentum in $p \bar p$ colliders.