We present results obtained from a study of the structure of hadronic events recorded by the L3 detector at various centre-of-mass energies. The distributions of event shape variables and the energy dependence of their mean values are measured from 30GeV to 189GeV and compared with various QCD models. The energy dependence of the moments of event shape variables is used to test a power law ansatz for the non-perturbative component. We obtain a universal value of the non-perturbative parameter alpha_0 = 0.537 +/- 0.073. From a comparison with resummed O(alpha_s^2) QCD calculations, we determine the strong coupling constant at each of the selected energies. The measurements demonstrate the running of alpha_s as expected in QCD with a value of alpha_s(m_Z) = 0.1215 +/- 0.0012 (exp) +/- 0.0061 (th).
The strong coupling constant, ALPHA-s, as determined from the combined event shape variables as a function of c.m. energy. The values for c.m. energy belowthe Z0 mass were determined only for four event shape variables.
In this Report, QCD results obtained from a study of hadronic event structure in high energy e^+e^- interactions with the L3 detector are presented. The operation of the LEP collider at many different collision energies from 91 GeV to 209 GeV offers a unique opportunity to test QCD by measuring the energy dependence of different observables. The main results concern the measurement of the strong coupling constant, \alpha_s, from hadronic event shapes and the study of effects of soft gluon coherence through charged particle multiplicity and momentum distributions.
Differential distributions for event thrust.
The energy dependence of the relative production rate of three-jet events is studied in hadronic e + e − annihilation events at center of mass energies between 22 and 46.7 GeV. Three-jet events are defined by a jet finding algorithm which is closely related to the definition of resolvable jets used in O( α s 2 ) perturbative QCD calculations, where the relative production rate of three-jet events is roughly proportional to the size of the strong coupling strength. The production rates of three-jet events in the data decrease significantly with increasing centre of mass energy. The experimental rates, which are independent of fragmentation model calculations, can be directly compared to theoretically calculated jet production rates and are in good agreement with the QCD expectations of a running coupling strength. The hypothesis of an energy independent coupling constant can be excluded with a significance of four standard derivations.