Hadronic decays of Z° bosons produced in ee− annihilation are ideal for testing QCD. This thesis presents a measurement of the charged-particle multiplicity distribution and the first experimental study of the ratio of cumulant to factorial moments, using hadronic Z° decays collected by the SLD experiment at SLAC. The author finds that this ratio, as a function of the moment-rank q, decreases sharply to a negative minimum at q = 5, which is followed by quasi-oscillations. These features are in qualitative agreement with expectations from higher-order perturbative QCD. The author also presents an analysis of the intermittency in rapidity phase space using the method of scaled factorial moments. It is found that both parton cascade and hard-gluon radiations contribute to the growth of the moments by studying the event-shape and jet-topology dependencies. All aspects of the data appear to be reproduced reasonably well by the QCD-based Monte Carlo model.

http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/0492

This volume concentrates on three main areas of current research in high energy physics: (1) multiparticle and diffractive production in perturbative and nonperturbative QCD, (2) confinement-deconfinement mechanism and the RHIC physics, and (3) interface between high-energy collisions and cosmic-ray/astro-physics. The specific topics covered include: QCD at high energies, diffractive production, and small-x physics, multiparticle production and systematics: correlations and fluctuations, hadronic final states in e+e-, lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron collisions, relativistic heavy ion collisions, interface between high-energy collisions and cosmic-ray physics, and recent development in deconfinement.

This international meeting on ultrahigh energy multiparticle phenomena started with a summary of neutrino physics, followed by a detailed review of LEP results. It moved on to the fast-breaking field of rapidity gaps, hard pomeron and small-x structure functions at both Hera and the FermiLab Tevatron. The major collider experiments at FermiLab, and in particular, the results of the top quark search were presented in complete detail. The fields of intermittency, multiplicities, correlation functions, heavy quarks, soft and semihard hadronic physics, and the particle physics aspects of cosmic rays were subjects of spirited debate.

We have studied hadronic final states produced in the decays of Z bosons using the Mark II detector at SLC. We have measured the distributions of global shape parameters, inclusive charged particle distributions, charge particle multiplicity and jet multiplicity. The results are compared to predictions of QCD-based models optimized at the PEP energy. The data and models agree within the present statistical precision. We have also investigated a new method to determine the QCD scale parameter [Lambda]{sub {ovr MS}} using differential jet multiplicity. 9 refs., 5 figs.

The authors have measured the differential cross sections for the production of [pi]{sup {+-}}, K{sup {+-}}, K°, K*(892), [phi](1,020), p and [Lambda] in hadronic Z° decays and in subsets of flavor-tagged Z° → light quark (u{anti u}, d{anti d}, or s{anti s}), Z° → c{anti c} and Z° → b{anti b} events. Charged hadrons were identified with the SLD Cherenkov ring imaging detector. The vertex detector was employed to select flavor enriched samples and the polarized electron beam from SLC was used to tag quark and anti-quark jets. The authors observe a flavor dependence in the hadron fragmentation functions. The authors present evidence for leading particle production in hadronic decays of the Z° boson to light-flavor jets and a direct measurement of the strangeness suppression factor [gamma]{sub s}.

This book contains a wide spectrum of articles which report the current research progress in topics concerning the dynamics of multiparticle production in high energy collision processes, with emphasis on nonperturbative aspects of QCD. The topics covered are: the phase diagram of QCD and related transitions; correlations and fluctuations in a variety of experiments involving multiparticle production (e+e- annihilation, pp collisions and heavy ion collisions); recent theoretical and experimental developments in interferometry and particle correlations; event-by-event fluctuations in high energy experiments; concepts of chaos and complexity in multiparticle dynamics and related phenomenology; relevant theoretical ideas based on QCD as a field theory.