Integer-charged quark model and electron-positron annihilation into three jets

Abstract

The consequences of the integer-charge quark model in electron-positron annihilation into three jets are studied. To first order in α_s, three-gluon jets also contribute, in addition to quark-antiquark-gluon jets. If the gluon-mass is smaller than about 2 GeV, these three-gluon jets can dominate at PETRA energies (∼30 GeV). The angular distribution is presented as a test to signal this three-gluon jet. If however, the coloured-Higgs intermediate states are taken into account, the three-gluon jet is no longer dominant and can easily escape detection. The model of broken colour symmetry, in which all these phenomena occur, is worked out explicitly.