Multiplicities of charged pions and unidentified charged hadrons from deep-inelastic scattering of muons off an isoscalar target

Abstract

Multiplicities of charged pions and unidentified hadrons produced in deep-inelastic scattering were measured in bins of the Bjorken scaling variable $x$, the relative virtual-photon energy $y$ and the relative hadron energy $z$. Data were obtained by the COMPASS Collaboration using a 160 GeV muon beam and an isoscalar target (${}^6$LiD). They cover the kinematic domain in the photon virtuality $Q^2$ > 1(GeV/c${)}^2$, $0.004<x<0.4$, $0.2<z<0.85$ and $0.1<y<0.7$. In addition, a leading-order pQCD analysis was performed using the pion multiplicity results to extract quark fragmentation functions.