Hadron Transverse Momentum Distributions in Muon Deep Inelastic Scattering at 160 GeV/$c$

TL;DR

This paper measures charged hadron multiplicities and transverse momentum distributions in deep inelastic muon scattering at 160 GeV/c, exploring how these distributions depend on various kinematic variables to extract information about parton intrinsic transverse momentum.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of hadron transverse momentum distributions and demonstrates how these can be used to determine the intrinsic transverse momentum of partons in a leading order QCD framework.

Findings

$p_T^2$ distributions fit with exponential functions at low $p_T^2$

Dependence of $raket{p_T^2}$ on $x_{Bj}$, $Q^2$, $W^2$, and $z$

Potential to extract $raket{k_ot^2}$ from $z$-dependence of $raket{p_T^2}$

Abstract

Multiplicities of charged hadrons produced in deep inelastic muon scattering off a $^6$LiD target have been measured as a function of the DIS variables $x_{Bj}$, $Q^2$, $W^2$ and the final state hadron variables $p_T$ and $z$. The $p_T^2$ distributions are fitted with a single exponential function at low values of $p_T^2$ to determine the dependence of $\langle p_T^2 \rangle$ on $x_{Bj}$, $Q^2$, $W^2$ and $z$. The $z$-dependence of $\langle p_T^2 \rangle$ is shown to be a potential tool to extract the average intrinsic transverse momentum squared of partons, $\langle k_{\perp}^2 \rangle$, as a function of $x_{Bj}$ and $Q^2$ in a leading order QCD parton model.