A study of differences between quark and gluon jets using vertex tagging of quark jets

Abstract

Quark and gluon jets with equal energies are identified in three-jet hadronicZ ⁰ events, using reconstructed secondary vertices from heavy quark decay in conjunction with energy ordering of the jets to anti-tag the gluon jets. Selection of jets from a symmetric event topology allows their properties to be compared in a simple and direct manner. The jets under study have an energy of about 24 GeV. It is observed that gluon jets have a larger angular width than quark jets and yield a softer particle energy spectrum. Correspondingly, the mean particle multiplicity is found to be larger for gluon than for quark jets. Correcting the distributions for residual misidentification of the quark and gluon jets, the ratio of mean particle multiplicty of gluon relative to quark jets is measured to be

$$\frac{{\left\langle n \right\rangle _{gluon} }}{{\left\langle n \right\rangle _{quark} }} = 1.27 \pm 0.04(stat.) \pm 0.06(syst.),$$

where the jets are defined using thek _⊥ jet finder. The numerical value of this ratio is found to be sensitive to the choice of the jet algorithm. The experimental results are compared to Monte Carlo calculations which incorporate perturbative QCD along with different assumptions about the hadronization process.