Hadron Fragmentation Functions and Leading Particle Effects in Hadronic Z0 Decays: New Results from SLD

Abstract

We have measured the differential cross sections for the production of $\pi^{\pm}, K^{\pm}, K^0, K^{*0}, \Phi, p$ and $\Lambda$ in hadronic $Z^0$ decays and in subsets of flavor-tagged $Z^0 \to$ light quark ($u \bar{u}$, $d \bar{d}$, or $s \bar{s}$), $Z^0 \to c \bar{c}$ and $Z^0 \to b \bar{b}$ events. Charged hadrons were identified with the SLD Cherenkov ring imaging detector. The vertex detector was employed to select flavor enriched samples and the polarized electron beam from SLC was used to tag quark and anti-quark jets. We observe a flavor dependence in the hadron fragmentation functions. We present evidence for leading particle production in hadronic decays of the $Z^{0}$ boson to light-flavor jets and a direct measurement of the strangeness suppression factor $\gamma_s$.