Eur. Phys. J. C (2006) 48: 3-13
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2006-02625-4

Experimental Physics

Measurement of the strong coupling α_S from the four-jet rate in e⁺e^- annihilation using JADE data

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Föhringer Ring 6, 80805, Munich, Germany
² Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Am Coulombwall 1, 85748, Garching, Germany
³ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Rd., Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

Received: 30 May 2006
Published online: 19 September 2006

Abstract

Data from e⁺e^- annihilation into hadrons collected by the JADE experiment at centre-of-mass energies between 14 GeV and 44 GeV are used to study the four-jet event production rate as a function of the Durham jet algorithm’s resolution parameter y_cut. The four-jet rate is compared to QCD next-to-leading order calculations including resummation of large logarithms in the next-to-leading logarithmic approximation. The strong coupling measured from the four-jet rate is in agreement with the world average.