Production of charged pions, kaons, and protons in e+e− annihilations into hadrons at √s = 10.54 GeV

Abstract

Inclusive production cross sections of π ± , K ± and p / ¯ p per hadronic e + e − annihilation event are measured at a center-of-mass energy of 10.54 GeV, using a relatively small sample of very high quality data from the BABAR experiment at the PEP-II B -factory at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The drift chamber and Cherenkov detector provide clean samples of identified π ± , K ± , and p / ¯ p over a wide range of momenta. Since the center-of-mass energy is below the threshold to produce a B ¯¯¯ B pair, with B a bottom-quark meson, these data represent a pure e + e − → q ¯ q sample with four quark flavors, and are used to test QCD predictions and hadronization models. Combined with measurements at other energies, in particular at the Z 0 resonance, they also provide precise constraints on the scaling properties of the hadronization process over a wide energy range.