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

Abstract

Inclusive production cross sections of $\ddot{I}{€}^{\pm }$, $K^{\pm }$ and $p\bar{p}$ per hadronic $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation event in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ 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 $\ddot{I}{€}^{\pm }$, $K^{\pm }$ and $p\bar{p}$ over a wide range of momenta. Since the center-of-mass energy is below the threshold to produce a $B\bar{B}$ pair, with $B$ a bottom-quark meson, these data represent a pure $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to q\bar{q}$ 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 $Z^0$ resonance, they also provide precise constraints on the scaling properties of the hadronization process over a wide energy range.

28 pages, 17 postscript figures