We discuss the production of two hadrons in e+e- annihilation within the framework of perturbative QCD. The cross section for this process is calculated to next-to-leading order accuracy with a selection of variables that allows the consideration of events where the two hadrons are detected in the same jet. In this configuration we contemplate the possibility that the hadrons come from a double fragmentation of a single parton. The double-fragmentation functions required to describe the transition of a parton to two hadrons are also necessary to completely factorize all collinear singularities. We explicitly show that factorization applies to next-to-leading order in the case of two-hadron production.
We present a first analysis of parton-to-pion fragmentation functions at next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD based on single-inclusive pion production in electron-positron annihilation. Special emphasis is put on the technical details necessary to perform the QCD scale evolution and cross section calculation in Mellin moment space. We demonstrate how the description of the data and the theoretical uncertainties are improved when next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections are included.
We report the results of a next-to-leading order event generator of purely gluonic jet production. This calculation is the first step in the construction of a full next-to-leading order calculation of three jet production at hadron colliders. Several jet-algorithms commonly used in experiments are implemented and their numerical stability is investigated.
We study inclusive charged-hadron production in collisions of quasireal photons at NLO in perturbative QCD, using fragmentation functions recently extracted from PEP and LEP1 data. We superimpose the direct (DD), single-resolved (DR), and double-resolved (RR) gamma-gamma channels. First, we confront existing data taken by TASSO at PETRA and by MARK II at PEP with our NLO calculations. We also make comparisons with the neutral-kaon to charged-hadron ratio measured by MARK II. Then, we present NLO predictions for LEP2, a next-generation e+e- linear collider (NLC) in the TESLA design, and a Compton collider obtained by converting a NLC. We analyze transverse-momentum and rapidity spectra with regard to the scale dependence, the interplay of the DD, DR, and RR components, the sensitivity to the gluon density in the resolved photon, and the influence of gluon fragmentation. It turns out that the inclusive measurement of small-p_T hadrons at a Compton collider would greatly constrain the gluon density of the photon and the gluon fragmentation function.
The recently completed calculation of the full electroweak O(alpha) corrections to the charged-current four-fermion production processes e+e- --> nu_tau tau+ mu- anti-nu_mu, u anti-d mu- anti-nu_mu, and u anti-d s anti-c is briefly reviewed. The calculation is performed using complex gauge-boson masses, supplemented by complex couplings to restore gauge invariance. The evaluation of the occurring one-loop tensor integrals, which include 5- and 6-point functions, requires new techniques. The effects of the complete O(alpha) corrections to the total cross section and to some differential cross sections of physical interest are discussed and compared to predictions based on the double-pole approximation, revealing that the latter approximation is not sufficient to fully exploit the potential of a future linear collider in an analysis of W-boson pairs at high energies.
We present the complete leading-order results for the azimuthal dependences and polarization observables in $e^+e^-to h_1 h_2 + X$ processes, where the two hadrons are produced almost back-to-back, within a transverse momentum dependent (TMD) factorization scheme. We consider spinless (or unpolarized) and spin-1/2 hadron production and give the full set of the corresponding quark and gluon TMD fragmentation functions (TMD-FFs). By adopting the helicity formalism, which allows for a more direct probabilistic interpretation, single- and double-polarization cases are discussed in detail. Simplified expressions, useful for phenomenological analyses, are obtained by assuming a factorized Gaussian-like dependence on intrinsic transverse momenta for the TMD-FFs.