• Energy Research

We determine the strong coupling constant alphas and its energy dependence from the pT dependence of the inclusive jet cross section in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV. The strong coupling constant is determined over the transverse momentum range 50 < pT < 145 GeV. Using perturbative QCD calculations to order O(alphas^3) combined with O(alphas^4) contributions from threshold corrections, we obtain alphas(MZ) = 0.1161 +0.0041 -0.0048. This is the most precise result obtained at a hadron-hadron collider. 7 pages with 1 figure and 1 table; updated to reflect published version

We present results obtained from a study of the structure of hadronic events recorded by the L3 detector at various centre-of-mass energies. The distributions of event shape variables and the energy dependence of their mean values are measured from 30GeV to 189GeV and compared with various QCD models. The energy dependence of the moments of event shape variables is used to test a power law ansatz for the non-perturbative component. We obtain a universal value of the non-perturbative parameter alpha_0 = 0.537 +/- 0.073. From a comparison with resummed O(alpha_s^2) QCD calculations, we determine the strong coupling constant at each of the selected energies. The measurements demonstrate the running of alpha_s as expected in QCD with a value of alpha_s(m_Z) = 0.1215 +/- 0.0012 (exp) +/- 0.0061 (th).

We present a study of the structure of hadronic events recorded by the L3 detector at LEP at the center of mass energies of 161 and 172 GeV. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 21.25 pb-1 collected during the high energy runs of 1996. The distributions of event shape variables and the energy dependence of their mean values are well reproduced by QCD models. From a comparison of the data with resummed second order QCD calculations, we determine the strong coupling constant at the two energies. Combining with our earlier measurements we find that the strong coupling constant decreases with increasing energy as expected in QCD.