Inclusive Production of Charged Hadrons in Photon-Photon Collisions

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of charged hadron production in photon-photon collisions at LEP energies, comparing results to NLO QCD predictions and highlighting discrepancies with previous measurements.

Contribution

First measurement of inclusive charged hadron production in photon-photon collisions at LEP energies with detailed comparison to NLO QCD calculations.

Findings

Data agree with NLO predictions at high transverse momentum

Significant deviation observed from L3 Collaboration's previous measurements

Results provide new insights into photon-photon interaction dynamics

Abstract

The inclusive production of charged hadrons in the collisions of quasi-real photons e+e- -> e+e- +X has been measured using the OPAL detector at LEP. The data were taken at e+e- centre-of-mass energies from 183 to 209 GeV. The differential cross-sections as a function of the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the hadrons are compared to theoretical calculations of up to next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant alpha{s}. The data are also compared to a measurement by the L3 Collaboration, in which a large deviation from the NLO predictions is observed.