Data from e+e- annihilation into hadrons collected by the JADE experiment at centre-of-mass energies between 14 GeV and 44 GeV are used to study the four-jet event production rate as a function of the Durham jet algorithms resolution parameter ycut.
The four-jet rate is compared to QCD next-to-leading order calculations including resummation of large logarithms in the next-to-leading logarithmic approximation. The strong coupling measured from the four-jet rate is as(MZ)=0.1159+-0.0004(stat)+-0.0012(expt)+-0.0024(had)+-0.0007(theo) in agreement with the world average.
