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.
Jet fractions using the JADE algorithm as a function of the jet resolution parameter YCUT at c.m. energy 130.1 GeV.
Jet fractions using the JADE algorithm as a function of the jet resolution parameter YCUT at c.m. energy 136.1 GeV.
Jet fractions using the JADE algorithm as a function of the jet resolution parameter YCUT at c.m. energy 161.3 GeV.
We present a study of the structure of hadronic events recorded by the L3 detector at center-of-mass energies of 130 and 136 GeV. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5 pb −1 collected during the high energy run of 1995. The shapes of the event shape distributions and the energy dependence of their mean values are well reproduced by QCD models. From a comparison of the data with resummed O (α s 2 ) QCD calculations, we determine the strong coupling constant to be α s (133 GeV) = 0.107 ± 0.005(exp) ± 0.006(theor).
Mean values of the event shape variables.
Mean charged particle multiplicity.
The value of alpha_s from the fits to the event shape variables : thrust (THRUST), scale heavy jet mass (MH**2/S), total jet broadening (BT)and wide jet broadening (BW). The last value is combined result (COMBINED). The second systematic error is due to uncertainties in the theory.