Determination of fragmentation functions and their uncertainties from e+ + e- -> h + X data

Abstract

Fragmentation functions are determined for pions, kaons, and nucleons by a global analysis of charged-hadron production data in electron-positron annihilation. The optimum functions are obtained in both leading order (LO) and next-to-leading order (NLO) of alpha_s. It is important that uncertainties of the fragmentation functions are estimated in this work by the Hessian method. We found that the uncertainties are large at small Q^2 and that they are generally reduced in the NLO in comparison with the LO ones. We supply a code for calculating the fragmentation functions and their uncertainties for the pions, kaons, and nucleons at given z and Q^2.