Experimental studies of unbiased gluon jets from e ¿ e ¿ annihilations using the jet boost algorithm

We present the first exptl. results based on the jet boost algorithm, a technique to select unbiased samples of gluonjets in e+e- annihilations, i.e. gluonjets free of biases introduced by event selection or jet finding criteria. Our results are derived from hadronic Z0 decays obsd. with the OPAL detector at the LEP e+e- collider at CERN. First, we test the boost algorithm through studies with HERWIG Monte Carlo events and find that it provides accurate measurements of the charged particle multiplicity distributions of unbiased gluonjets for jet energies larger than about 5 GeV, and of the jet particle energy spectra ( fragmentation functions) for jet energies larger than about 14 GeV. Second, we apply the boost algorithm to our data to derive unbiased measurements of the gluonjet multiplicity distribution for energies between about 5 and 18 GeV, and of the gluonjet fragmentation functionat 14 and 18 GeV. In conjunction with our earlier results at 40 GeV, we then test QCD calcns. for the energy evolution of the distributions, specifically the mean and first two nontrivial normalized factorial momentsof the multiplicity distribution, and the fragmentation function. The theor. results are in global agreement with the data, although the factorial momentsare not well described for jet energies below about 14 GeV. [on SciFinder (R)]