Charged particle production in high Q(2) deep-inelastic scattering at HERA

Abstract

The average charged track multiplicity and the normalised distribution of the scaled momentum, x(p), of charged final state hadrons are measured in deep-inelastic ep scattering at high Q(2) in the Breit frame of reference. The analysis covers the range of photon virtuality 100 LT Q(2) LT 20000 GeV2. Compared with previous results presented by HERA experiments this analysis has a significantly higher statistical precision and extends the phase space to higher Q(2) and to the full range of x(p). The results are compared with e(+)e(-) annihilation data and with various calculations based on perturbative QCD using different models of the hadronisation process. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.