Jet rates in deep inelastic electron proton scattering are studied with the H1 detector at HERA for momentum transfers squared between 10 and 4000 GeV 2 . It is shown that they can be quantitatively described by perturbative QCD in next to leading order making use of the parton densities of the proton and with the strong coupling constant α s as a free parameter. The measured value, α s ( M Z 2 ) = 0.123 ± 0.018, is in agreement both with determinations from e + e − annihilation at LEP using the same observable and with the world average.
Determination of ALP_S(MZ**2). Error contains both statistics and systematics.
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