The total cross section for hadron production by e+e− annihilation has been measured at center-of-mass energies between 2.4 and 5.0 GeV. Aside from the very narrow resonances ψ(3105) and ψ(3695), the cross section varies between 32 and 17 nb over this region with structure in the vicinity of 4.1 GeV.
η production has been investigated by the Mark II collaboration at the SLAC e+e− storage ring PEP. η particles are reconstructed by their γγ decay mode. The η fragmentation function has been measured and found to be in good agreement with the Lund-model prediction. η′ production has been measured for the first time in high-energy e+e− annihilation. There is evidence at the 3σ level for Ds± decay into ηπ± and η′π±.
Measurements of multihadron production in e+e− annihilation at center-of-mass energies between 2.6 and 7.8 GeV are presented. Aside from the narrow resonances ψ(3095) and ψ(3684), the total hadronic cross section is found to be approximately 2.7 times the cross section for the production of muon pairs at c.m. energies below 3.7 GeV and 4.3 times the muon-pair cross section at c.m. energies above 5.5 GeV. Complicated structure is found at intermediate energies. Charged-particle multiplicities and inclusive momentum distributions are presented.
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.