Production of charged pions, kaons, and protons in e+e - annihilations into hadrons at √s=10.54 GeV

Abstract

Inclusive production cross sections of π±, K ± and p/p̄ per hadronic e+e- annihilation event are measured at a center-of-mass energy of 10.54 GeV, using a relatively small sample of very high quality data from the BABAR experiment at the PEP-II B-factory at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The drift chamber and Cherenkov detector provide clean samples of identified π±, K±, and p/p̄ over a wide range of momenta. Since the center-of-mass energy is below the threshold to produce a BB̄ pair, with B a bottom-quark meson, these data represent a pure e +e-→qq̄ sample with four quark flavors, and are used to test QCD predictions and hadronization models. Combined with measurements at other energies, in particular at the Z0 resonance, they also provide precise constraints on the scaling properties of the hadronization process over a wide energy range. © 2013 American Physical Society.