Polarized Heavy Quarkonia Production using the Color Evaporation Model*

Even more than 40 years after the discovery of $J/\psi$, the production mechanism of quarkonia is still not well understood. Non-Relativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD), perhaps the best known approach for studying quarkonia production can reproduce the $J/\psi$ $p_T$ distribution. However, the long distance matrix elements (LDMEs) fitted from the $p_T$ distributions fail to correctly describe the polarization. In this talk, I will outline the recent challenges to NRQCD and present the first leading order prediction of the polarization using the Color Evaporation Model, which integrates over all color states.