Hadron Multiplicity and Fragmentation in SIDIS

Abstract

COMPASS final results on multiplicities of charged hadrons and of identified pions and kaons produced in the deep inelastic muon scattering off an isoscalar target are presented and compared to HERMES results. Measurements are done in bins of x, y and z in a wide kinematic range. The hadron and pion data show a good agreement with (N)LO QCD expectations. The kaon data are long awaited for since they are needed to extract kaon fragmentation functions, a crucial ingredient in solving the strange quark polarisation puzzle. COMPASS results for kaons differ from the expectations of the old NLO DSS fit and they cannot be well described by LO QCD either. In this context the importance of $K^-$/$K^+$ multiplicity ratio at high z is discussed.