A model-independent irreducible tensor formalism which has been developed earlier to analyze measurements of p p → pp π• , is extended to present a theoretical discussion of p p → pp ω and of ω polarization in pp → pp ω and in p p → pp ω. The recent measurement of unpolarized differential cross section for pp → pp ω is analyzed using this theoretical formalism.PACS numbers: 13.75. Cs, 13.88.+e, 24.70.+s, 25.40.Ve Experimental study of meson production in N N collisions has attracted considerable interest during the last decade and a half. The early measurements of total crosssection [1] for pion production were found surprisingly to be more than a factor of 5 than the theoretical predictions [2]. At c.m. energies close to threshold, the relative kinetic energies between the particles in the final state are small and an analysis involves, therefore, only a few partial waves. On the other hand, a large momentum transfer is involved when an additional particle is produced in the final state, thus making the reaction sensitive to the features of the N N interaction at short distances where the nucleons start to overlap. When a heavier meson like ω is produced, the overlapping region corresponds [3] to a distance of about 0.2f m. It is also known that the short range part of the N N interaction is dominated by the ω exchange [4]. Consequently, a variety of theoretical models have been proposed [5] not only to bridge the gap between theory and experiment, but also to test results of QCD based discussions of the N N interaction. According to the OZI rule [6], φ production relative to ω production is suppressed in the absence of strange quarks in the initial state. This ratio R has been measured [7], in view of the dramatic violations [8] observed inpp collisions, and compared to the theoretical estimate [9] of 4.2×10 −3 after correcting for the available phase space. We may refer [10] for modifications of the rule. Apart from looking for the strange quark content of the nucleon in the initial state, attention has also been focused on resonance contributions [11,12,13] to vector meson production in N N collisions. The constituent quark models [14] predict highly excited N * states which have not been seen in πN scattering. This " missing resonance problem " [15] has also catalyzed the experimental study of ω meson production in the hope that the missing resonances may couple more strongly or even exclusively to the ωN channel in comparison to the πN channel, although ωN decay modes of resonances have not been observed [16]. Also the cross-sections of vector meson production enter as inputs into transport models for dilepton emission in heavy ion collisions which may in turn be used to study the off-shell ω production and medium modifications of the widths and masses of the resonances [13].Meson production in N N collisions involves also spin state transitions of the N N system, which do not occur in elastic N N scattering. In pp → ppπ 0 , for example, the transition of the pp system at threshold is from an initial sp...