Abstract.
The transverse, longitudinal and asymmetric components of the fragmentation function are measured from the inclusive charged particles produced in \(e^+e^-\) collisions at LEP. As in deep inelastic scattering, these data are important for tests of QCD. The transverse \(\sigma_T\) and longitudinal \(\sigma_L\) components of the total hadronic cross section \(\sigma_{tot}\) are evaluated from the measured fragmentation functions. They are found to be \(\sigma_T/\sigma_{tot}=0.949\pm 0.001(stat.)\pm 0.007(syst.)\) and \(\sigma_L/\sigma_{tot}=0.051\pm 0.001(stat.)\pm 0.007(syst.)\) respectively. The strong coupling constant is calculated from \(\sigma_L/\sigma_{tot}\) in next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD, giving \[ \alpha_s(M_Z)=0.120\pm 0.002(stat.)\pm 0.013(syst.)\pm 0.007(scale) . \] Including non-perturbative power corrections leads to \[ \alpha_s(M_Z)=0.101\pm 0.002(stat.)\pm 0.013(syst.)\pm 0.007(scale) . \] The measured transverse and longitudinal components of the fragmentation function are used to estimate the mean charged multiplicity, \[ \langle n^{ch}\rangle = 21.21 \pm 0.01(stat.)\pm 0.20(syst.) \] The fragmentation functions and multiplicities in \(b\overline{b}\) and light quark events are compared. The measured transverse and longitudinal components of the fragmentation function allow the gluon fragmentation function to be evaluated.
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Received: 12 September 1997 / Published online: 19 October 1998
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DELPHI Collaboration., Abreu et al., P. Measurement of the quark and gluon fragmentation functions in Z\(^0\) hadronic decays. Eur. Phys. J. C 6, 19–33 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/s100529801013
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s100529801013