Power Corrections in Electron-Positron Annihilation: Experimental Review

Abstract

Experimental studies of power corrections with e+e- data are reviewed. An overview of the available data for jet and event shape observables is given and recent analyses based on the Dokshitzer-Marchesini-Webber (DMW) model of power corrections are summarised. The studies involve both distributions of the observables and their mean values. The agreement between perturbative QCD combined with DMW power corrections and the data is generally good, and the few exceptions are discussed. The use of low energy data sets highlights deficiencies in the existing calculations for some observables. A study of the finiteness of the physical strong coupling at low energies using hadronic $τ$ decays is shown.