Measurement of the quark and gluon fragmentation functions in Z0 hadronic decays

The transverse, longitudinal and asymmetric components of the fragmentation function are measured from the inclusive charged particles produced in e+e- collisions at LEP. As in deep inelastic scattering, these data are important for tests of QCD. The transverse σΤ and longitudinal σL components of the total hadronic cross section σtot are evaluated from the measured fragmentation functions. They are found to be σΤ/σtot = 0.949 ± 0.001(stat.) ± 0.007(syst.) and σL/σtot = 0.051 ± 0.001(stat) ± 0.007(syst.) respectively. The strong coupling constant is calculated from σL/σtot in next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD, giving αs(Mz) = 0.120 ± 0.002(stat.) ± 0.013(syst.) ± 0.007(scale) . Including non-perturbative power corrections leads to αs(Mz) = 0.101 ± 0.002(stat.) ± 0.013(syst.) ± 0.007(scale) . The measured transverse and longitudinal components of the fragmentation function are used to estimate the mean charged multiplicity, 〈nch〉 = 21.21 ± 0.01(stat.) ± 0.20(syst.) The fragmentation functions and multiplicities in bb and light quark events are compared. The measured transverse and longitudinal components of the fragmentation function allow the gluon fragmentation function to be evaluated.