We present a perturbative QCD factorization formalism for inclusive production of heavy quarkonia of large transverse momentum, $p_T$ at collider energies, including both leading power (LP) and next-to-leading power (NLP) behavior in $p_T$. We demonstrate that both LP and NLP contributions can be factorized in terms of perturbatively calculable short-distance partonic coefficient functions and universal nonperturbative fragmentation functions, and derive the evolution equations that are implied by the factorization. We identify projection operators for all channels of the factorized LP and NLP infrared safe short-distance partonic hard parts, and corresponding operator definitions of fragmentation functions. For the NLP, we focus on the contributions involving the production of a heavy quark pair, a necessary condition for producing a heavy quarkonium. We evaluate the first nontrivial order of evolution kernels for all relevant fragmentation functions, and discuss the role of NLP contributions.

• Received 10 May 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.034006