STUDY OF THE STRONG COUPLING CONSTANT USING W+ JET PROCESSES

The ratio of the number of {ital W}+1 jet to {ital W}+0 jet events is measured with the D0 detector using data from the 1992--93 TevatronCollider run. For the {ital W}{r_arrow}{ital e}{nu} channel with a minimum jet {ital E}{sub {ital T}} cutoff of 25 GeV, the experimental ratio is 0.065{plus_minus}0.003(stat){plus_minus}0.007(syst). Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for various partondistributions agree well with each other and are all over 1 standard deviation below the measurement. Varying the strong coupling constant {alpha}{sub {ital s}} in both the partondistributions and the partoniccross sections simultaneously does not remove this discrepancy. {copyright} {ital 1995} {ital The} {ital American} {ital Physical} {ital Society}.