Next-to-leading order corrections to e^+ e^- \to four jets

Abstract

I present a general purpose Monte Carlo program for calculating the next-to-leading order corrections to arbitrary four-jet quantities in electron-positron annihilation. In the current version of the program, some subleading in color terms are neglected. As an example, I calculate the four-jet rate in the Durham scheme as well as the Bengtsson-Zerwas angular distribution at $O(α_s^3)$ and compare the results to existing data.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: (a) Solid (dashed) lines represent the one-loop (tree-level) predictions for $R_4$ in the Durham scheme for $\mu=\sqrt{s}$ and $\alpha_s = 0.118$. (b) Solid (dashed) lines show the dependence of $R_4$ on the renormalization scale $\mu$ for the one-loop (tree-level) predictions in the Durham scheme, for $y_{\rm cut} = 0.03$.
• Figure 2: Bengtsson-Zerwas distribution at tree level (dotted), one-loop (solid) and one-loop with $N_f = 8$ (dashed) compared to (a) OPAL OPAL95 and (b) ALEPH ALEPH97 data (histograms), which are corrected for detector and hadronization effects.