Investigation of Quark-Antiquark Interaction Properties using Leading Particle Measurements in e+e- Annihilation

TL;DR

This paper analyzes quark-antiquark interactions in electron-positron collisions by studying heavy meson production, revealing scaling behaviors and providing insights into hadron formation, quark masses, and inter-quark potentials.

Contribution

It introduces new measurements of heavy meson rapidity change distributions to extract properties of quark-antiquark interactions.

Findings

Scaling behavior observed in meson rapidity distributions

Estimated hadron formation times and effective quark masses

Predicted fragmentation functions for heavy quarks

Abstract

Measurements of heavy quark production in electron-positron collisions are used to analyse the strong interactions between quarks and anti-quarks. A scaling behaviour is observed in distributions of the rapidity change of D*, B*, and B mesons. From these distributions information is obtained on the hadron formation time, effective quark masses, and the potential between quark-antiquark pairs. Predictions for fragmentation functions are presented.