Eur. Phys. J. C 24, 245-260 (2002)
DOI: 10.1007/s100520200921
A next-to-leading order study of pion-pair production and comparison with E706 data
T. Binoth1, J.Ph. Guillet2, E. Pilon2 and M. Werlen21 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK
2 Laboratoire d'Annecy-Le-Vieux de Physique Théorique LAPTH, Chemin de Bellevue, B.P. 110, 74941 Annecy-le-Vieux, France
(Received: 8 November 2001 / Published online: 5 April 2002 - © Springer-Verlag / Società Italiana di Fisica 2002 )
Abstract
We discuss the production of pion pairs with a large invariant mass in hadronic
collisions. We present a study based on a perturbative QCD calculation at full
next-to-leading order accuracy, implemented in the computer programme
DIPHOX
. We provide a comparison of various predictions with the corresponding
observables measured by the E706 fixed target experiment. Discrepancies between data and next-to-leading order calculation
are carefully analysed. We classify the theoretical
next-to-leading order distributions with respect to their infrared
sensitivity,
and explain which distributions need improvements. Further, we comment on the
energy scale dependences of non pertubative effects.
© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2002