Soft-Particle Spectra as a Probe of Interconnection Effects in Hadronic W^+ W^- Events

Abstract

Cross-talk between the W^+ and W^- sources of hadron production at LEP2 offers a hope to learn about basic properties of QCD, but at the same time threatens high-precision measurements of the W boson mass. Directly visible effects are not expected to be large, however. It is, therefore, important to develop methods to measure the level of interconnection in the data --- `connectometers'. In this article we study one particular set of observables, namely the reduced rate of low-momentum particle production caused by reconnection. In realistic scenarios the expected signals are at the border of visibility, but not quite beyond reach. Special studies on kaons and protons, or with other subsets of the data, could provide supporting evidence. We also show how LEP1 Z$^0$ events could be used to define an alternative reference sample.