We present the general properties of jets produced bye+e− annihilation. Their production and fragmentation characteristics have been studied with charged particles for c.m. energies between 12 and 43 GeV. In this energy rangee+e− annihilation into hadrons is dominated by pair production of the five quarksu, d, s, c andb. In addition, hard gluon bremsstrahlung effects which are invisible at low energies become prominent at the high energies. The observed multiplicity distributions deviate from a Poisson distribution. The multiplicity distributions for the overall event as well as for each event hemisphere satisfy KNO scaling to within ∼20%. The distributions ofxp=2p/W are presented; scale breaking is observed at the level of 25%. The quantityxpdδ/dxp is compared with multigluon emission calculations which predict a Gaussian distribution in terms of ln(1/x). The observed energy dependence of the maximum of the distributions is in qualitative agreement with the calculations. Particle production is analysed with respect to the jet axis and longitudinal and transverse momentum spectra are presented. The angular distribution of the jet axis strongly supports the idea of predominant spin 1/2 quark pair production. The particle distributions with respect to the event plane show clearly the growing importance of planar events with increasing c.m. energies. They also exclude the presence of heavy quark production,e+e−→Q\(\bar Q\) for quark masses up to 5<mQ<20.3 GeV (|eQ|=2/3) and 7<mQ<19 GeV (|eQ|=1/3). The comparison of 1/σtotdδ/dpT measured at 14, 22 and 34 GeV suggests that hard gluon bremsstrahlung contributes mainly to transverse momenta larger than 0.5 GeV/c. The rapidity distribution forW≧22 GeV shows an enhancement away fromy=0 which corresponds to an increase in yield of 10–15% compared to the centre region (y=0). The enhancement probably results from heavy quark production and gluon bremsstrahlung. The particle flux around the jet axis shows with increasing c.m. energy a rapidly growing number of particles collimated around the jet axis, while at large angles to the jet axis almost noW dependence is observed. For fixed longitudinal momentump‖ approximate “fan invariance” is seen: The shape of the angular distribution around the jet axis is almost independent ofW. The collimation depends strongly onp‖. For smallp‖,p‖<0.2 GeV/c, isotropy is observed. With increasingp‖ the particles tend to be emitted closer and closer to the jet axis.

This paper presents the charged-particle multiplicity distributions for e+e− annihilation at √s =29 GeV measured in the High Resolution Spectrometer. The data, which correspond to an integrated luminosity of 185 pb−1, were obtained at the SLAC e+e− storage ring PEP. The techniques used to correct the observed prong numbers are discussed. The multiplicity distribution of the charged particles has a mean value 〈n〉=12.87±0.03±0.30, a dispersion D2=3.67±0.02±0.18, and an f2 moment of 0.60±0.02±0.18. Results are also presented for a two-jet sample selected with low sphericity and aplanarity. The charged-particle distributions are almost Poissonian and narrower than have been reported by other e+e− experiments in this energy range. The mean multiplicity increases with the event sphericity, and for the sample of threefold-symmetric three-jet events, a value of 〈n〉=16.3±0.3±0.7 is found. No correlation is observed between the multiplicities in the two hemispheres when the events are divided into two jets by a plane perpendicular to the thrust axis. This result is in contrast with the situation in soft hadronic collisions, where a strong forward-backward correlation is measured. For the single jets, a mean multiplicity of 6.43±0.02±0.15 and a dispersion value of D2=2.55±0.02±0.13 are found. These values give further support to the idea of independent jet fragmentation. The multiplicity distributions are well fit by the negative-binomial distribution. The semi-inclusive rapidity distributions are presented. Comparisons are made to the measurements of charged-particle multiplicities in hadron-hadron and lepton-nucleon collisions.

In this paper, results are presented from a study of the hadronic final states in e+e− annihilation at 29 GeV. The data were obtained with the High Resolution Spectrometer (HRS) at the SLAC PEP e+e− colliding-beam facility. The results are based on 6342 selected events corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.6 pb−1. The distributions of the events in sphericity (S), thrust (T), and aplanarity (A) are given and compared to other e+e− data in the same energy range. We measure 〈S〉=0.130±0.003±0.010 and 〈1-T〉=0.100±0.002. The sphericity distribution is compared to sphericity measurements made for beam jets in hadronic collisions as well as jets studied in neutrino scattering. The data sample is further reduced to 4371 events with the two-jet selections, S≤0.25 and A≤0.1. The single-particle distributions in the longitudinal and transverse directions are given. For low values of the momentum fraction (z=2p/W), the invariant distribution shows a maximum at z∼0.06, consistent with a QCD expectation. The data at high Feynman x (xF) show distribution consistent with being dominated by a (1-xf)2 variation for the leading quark-meson transition. The rapidity distribution shows a shallow central minimum with a height (1/NevdNh/dY‖Y=0=2.3±0.02±0.07. The mean charged multiplicity is measured to be 〈nch〉=13.1±0.05±0.6. The mean transverse momentum relative to the thrust axis 〈pT〉 rises as a function of z to a value of 0.70±0.02 GeV/c for z≳0.3. The distributions are compared to those measured in other reactions.

With the H1 detector at the ep collider HERA, D* meson production cross sections have been measured in deep inelastic scattering with four-momentum transfers Q^2>2 GeV2 and in photoproduction at energies around W(gamma p)~ 88 GeV and 194 GeV. Next-to-Leading Order QCD calculations are found to describe the differential cross sections within theoretical and experimental uncertainties. Using these calculations, the NLO gluon momentum distribution in the proton, x_g g(x_g), has been extracted in the momentum fraction range 7.5x10^{-4}< x_g <4x10^{-2} at average scales mu^2 =25 to 50 GeV2. The gluon momentum fraction x_g has been obtained from the measured kinematics of the scattered electron and the D* meson in the final state. The results compare well with the gluon distribution obtained from the analysis of scaling violations of the proton structure function F_2.

New results on the production of charged pions in p+p interactions are presented. The data come from a sample of 4.8 million inelastic events obtained with the NA49 detector at the CERN SPS at 158 GeV/c beam momentum. Pions are identified by energy loss measurement in a large TPC tracking system which covers a major fraction of the production phase space. Inclusive invariant cross sections are given on a grid of nearly 300 bins per charge over intervals from 0 to 2 GeV/c in transverse momentum and from 0 to 0.85 in Feynman x. The results are compared to existing data in overlapping energy ranges.

We present the general properties of multihadron final states produced by e+e− annihilation at center-of-mass energies from 52 to 57 GeV in the AMY detector at the KEK collider TRISTAN. Global shape, inclusive charged-particle, and particle-flow distributions are presented. Our measurements are compared with QCD+fragmentation models that use either leading-logarithmic parton-shower evolution or QCD matrix elements at the parton level, and either string or cluster fragmentation for hadronization.

The large amount of data accumulated by the TASSO detector at 35 GeV c.m. energy has been compared with the predictions of the latest generation of perturbative QCD+fragmentation models. By adjustment of the arbitrary parameters of these models, a very good description of the global properties of hadronic events was obtained. No one model gave the best description of all features of the data, each model being better than the others for some observables and worse in other quantities. We interpret these results in terms of the underlying QCD and hadronisation schemes. The trends of the data across the energy range 12.0≦W≦41.5 GeV are generally well reproduced by the models with the parameters optimised at 35 GeV.

Charged particle momentum distributions are studied in the reaction e+e- -> hadrons, using data collected with the OPAL detector at centre-of-mass energies from 192 GeV to 209 GeV. The data correspond to an average centre-of- mass energy of 201.7 GeV and a total integrated luminosity of 433 pb-1. The measured distributions and derived quantities, in combination with corresponding results obtained at lower centre-of-mass energies, are compared to QCD predictions in various theoretical approaches to study the energy dependence of the strong interaction and to test QCD as the theory describing it. In general, a good agreement is found between the measurements and the corresponding QCD predictions.

We have studied hadronic events from e+e- annihilation data at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt{s}=172, 183 and 189 GeV. The total integrated luminosity of the three samples, measured with the OPAL detector, corresponds to 250 pb^-1. We present distributions of event shape variables, charged particle multiplicity and momentum, measured separately in the three data samples. From these we extract measurements of the strong coupling alpha_s, the mean charged particle multiplicity <nch> and the peak position xi_0 in the xi_p=ln(1/x_p) distribution. In general the data are described well by analytic QCD calculations and Monte Carlo models. Our measured values of alpha_s, <nch> and xi_0 are consistent with previous determinations at sqrt{s}=MZ.

We have studied hadronic events produced at LEP at a centre-of-mass energy of 161 GeV. We present distributions of event shape variables, jet rates, charged particle momentum spectra and multiplicities. We determine the strong coupling strength to be αs(161 GeV) = 0.101±0.005(stat.)±0.007(syst.), the mean charged particle multiplicity to be 〈nch〉(161 GeV) = 24.46 ± 0.45(stat.) ± 0.44(syst.) and the position of the peak in the ξp = ln(1/xp) distribution to be ξ0(161 GeV) = 4.00 ±0.03(stat.)±0.04(syst.). These results are compared to data taken at lower centre-of-mass energies and to analytic QCD or Monte Carlo predictions. Our measured value of αs(161 GeV) is consistent with other measurements of αs. Within the current statistical and systematic uncertainties, the PYTHIA, HERWIG and ARIADNE QCD Monte Carlo models and analytic calculations are in overall agreement with our measurements. The COJETS QCD Monte Carlo is in general agreement with the data for momentum weighted distributions like Thrust, but predicts a significantly larger charged particle multiplicity than is observed experimentally.