0000000000549674

AUTHOR

R Zukanovich-funchal

DETERMINATION OF ALPHA(S) FOR B-QUARKS AT THE Z(0) RESONANCE

The strong coupling constant for b quarks has been determined, and its flavour independence, as predicted by QCD, investigated. The analysis involved events with lepton candidates selected from approximately 356 000 hadronic decays of the Z0, collected by the DELPHI detector at LEP in 1990 and 199 1. A method based on a direct comparison of the three-jet fraction in a b enriched sample, selected by requiring leptons with large momenta and transverse momenta, to that of the entire hadronic sample, illustrated the significant effect of the b quark mass on the multi-jet cross section, and verified the flavour independence of the strong coupling constant to an accuracy of +/- 6%. A second proce…

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DETERMINATION OF ALPHA-S FROM THE SCALING VIOLATION IN THE FRAGMENTATION FUNCTIONS IN E+E- ANNIHILATION

A determination of the hadronic fragmentation functions of the Z0 boson is presented from a study of the inclusive hadron production with the DELPHI detector at LEP. These fragmentation functions were compared with the ones at lower energies, thus covering data in a large kinematic range: 196 less-than-or-equal-to Q2 less-than-or-equal-to 8312 GeV2 and x (= p(h)/E(beam)) > 0.08. A large scaling violation was observed, which was used to extract the strong coupling constant in second order QCD: alpha(s)(M(Z)) = 0.118 +/- 0.005. The corresponding QCD scale for five quark flavours is: LAMBDA(MS)(5)BAR = 230 +/- 60 MeV.

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