The production of Λ hyperons in e+e− annihilation has been measured as a function of their total momenta, transverse momenta, and the event thrust. The total production rate is 0.213±0.012±0.018 Λ or Λ¯ per hadronic event. The observation of correlations in rapidity and angles for events with two detected Λ decays supports fragmentation models with local baryon-number compensation.
The production cross sections for the Λ, Σ0, Ξ−, Σ0 (1385), Ξ0 (1530) and Ω− hyperons have been measured, both in the continuum and in direct ϒ decays. Baryon rates in direct ϒ decays are enhanced by a factor of 2.5 or more compared to the continuum. Such a large baryon enhancement cannot be explained by standard fragmentation models. The strangeness suppression for baryons and mesons turns out to be the same. A strong suppression of spin 3/2 states is observed.
Using the detector ARGUS at thee+e− storage ring DORIS II, we have investigated inclusive momentum spectra of charged pions, kaons, and protons from decays of the υ(4S) meson. The kaon spectra have been measured in two independent ways, by coherently exploiting the detector's particle identification capabilities, and by detecting decays in-flight. The extracted mean multiplicities for charged hadrons are 7.17±0.05±0.14 pions, 1.56±0.03±0.05 kaons and 0.110±0.010±0.007 protons per υ(4S) decay, where pions and protons fromKso and Δ decays have been subtracted.
We have measured the differential production cross sections as a function of scaled momentum x_p=2p/E_cm of the identified hadron species pi+, K+, K0, K*0, phi, p, Lambda0, and of the corresponding antihadron species in inclusive hadronic Z0 decays, as well as separately for Z0 decays into light (u, d, s), c and b flavors. Clear flavor dependences are observed, consistent with expectations based upon previously measured production and decay properties of heavy hadrons. These results were used to test the QCD predictions of Gribov and Lipatov, the predictions of QCD in the Modified Leading Logarithm Approximation with the ansatz of Local Parton-Hadron Duality, and the predictions of three fragmentation models. Ratios of production of different hadron species were also measured as a function of x_p and were used to study the suppression of strange meson, strange and non-strange baryon, and vector meson production in the jet fragmentation process. The light-flavor results provide improved tests of the above predictions, as they remove the contribution of heavy hadron production and decay from that of the rest of the fragmentation process. In addition we have compared hadron and antihadron production as a function of x_p in light quark (as opposed to antiquark) jets. Differences are observed at high x_p, providing direct evidence that higher-momentum hadrons are more likely to contain a primary quark or antiquark. The differences for pseudoscalar and vector kaons provide new measurements of strangeness suppression for high-x_p fragmentation products.
The polarization of Λ baryons from Z decays is studied with the Aleph apparatus. Evidence of longitudinal polarization of s quarks from Z decay is observed for the first time. The measured longitudinal Λ polarization is P L Λ = −0.32 ± 0.07 for z = p p beam > 0.3 . This agrees with the prediction of −0.39 ± 0.08 from the standard model and the constituent quark model, where the error is due to uncertainties in the mechanism for Λ production. The observed Λ polarization is diluted with respect to the primary s quark polarization by Λ baryons without a primary s quark. Measurements of the Λ forward-backward asymmetry and of the correlation between back-to-back Λ Λ pairs are used to check this dilution. In addition the transverse Λ polarization is measured. An indication of transverse polarization, more than two standard deviations away from zero, is found along the normal to the plane defined by the thrust axis and the Λ direction.
We present a study of the inclusive production of π 0 , η, K s 0 and Λ based on 929,000 hadronic Z decays recorded with the L3 detector at LEP. The measured inclusive momentum distributions have been compared with predictions from parton shower models as well as an analytical Quantum Chromodynamics calculation. Comparing to low energy e + e - data, we find that QCD describes the energy evolution of the hadron spectrum.
Inclusive distributions of charged particles in hadronic W decays are experimentally investigated using the statistics collected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP during 1997, 1998 and 1999, at centre-of-mass energies from 183 to around 200 GeV. The possible effects of interconnection between the hadronic decays of two Ws are not observed. Measurements of the average multiplicity for charged and identified particles in q qbar and WW events at centre-of-mass energies from 130 to 200 GeV and in W decays are presented. The results on the average multiplicity of identified particles and on the position xi^* of the maximum of the xi_p = -log(2p/sqrt(s)) distribution are compared with predictions of JETSET and MLLA calculations.
We report on an analysis of the multiplicity distributions of charged particles produced ine+e− annihilation into hadrons at c.m. energies between 14 and 46.8 GeV. The charged multiplicity distributions of the whole event and single hemisphere deviate significantly from the Poisson distribution but follow approximate KNO scaling. We have also studied the multiplicity distributions in various rapidity intervals and found that they can be well described by the negative binomial distribution only for small central intervals. We have also analysed forward-backward multiplicity correlations for different energies and selections of particle charge and shown that they can be understood in terms of the fragmentation properties of the different quark flavours and by the production and decay of resonances. These correlations are well reproduced by the Lund string model.
Cross sections are presented for the inclusive production of Λ hyperons in electron-positron annihilations at s=29 GeV based on the full 291-pb−1 sample of data taken in the High Resolution Spectrometer experiment at the SLAC e+e− storage ring PEP. These results, and the associated correlation analyses, are consistent with the Lund model predictions with the strange diquark suppression ratio δ fixed at 0.59±0.10±0.18, as compared to the standard Lund value of 0.32. The Λ multiplicity has been found to be 0.182±0.020 per event. The opposite-strangeness multiplicity 〈nΛΛ¯〉 has been measured to be 0.046±0.020, whereas the like-strangeness multiplicity 〈nΛΛ+Λ¯Λ¯〉 is 0.009±0.028. A strong correlation is found between Λ's and Λ¯'s; when one is found in an event, the other is found in the same event with a probability that exceeds 50%.
Data from the High Resolution Spectrometer at the SLAC storage ring PEP have been used to study the inclusive production of baryons and mesons. Time-of-flight measurements are used to identify the charged hadrons. Neutral hadrons are identified from effective-mass peaks associated with their decay into two charged particles. Cross sections and other inclusive production characteristics are presented for π±, K±, and K0 (K¯0) mesons, and for the baryons (antibaryons) p (p¯) and Λ (Λ¯). The ratio of the inclusive cross section to the point cross section for the K0 and K¯0 mesons is R(K0,K¯0)=6.15±0.13±0.25, and for Λ and Λ¯, R(Λ,Λ¯)=0.846±0.036±0.085. The neutral-hadron differential cross sections are compared with the predictions of the Lund string model.