Hadronic Final State in Deep-inelastic Scattering at HERA

Abstract

Data on the hadronic final state of deep-inelastic events at the ep collider HERA are reviewed. Fragmentation properties in the current region extracted from charged particle spectra are compared to e+e- and fixed target experiments at lower center of mass energies. A measurement of the strong coupling constant from integrated jet rates is presented and prospects to extract the gluon density in the proton by tagging vector mesons are discussed. Data on the inclusive mean transverse energy together with the transverse momentum distribution of single charged particles indicate an increased gluon activity in the central rapidity region when the phase space is enlarged. The measurement of the forward jet cross-section is discussed. Keeping the phase space fixed, the mean transverse energy and the mean charged multiplicity for certain rapidity ranges is found to behave analogously to ppbar collisions.