Gluon jet production by the processe+e−→e+e−+gluon-gluon

Abstract

A novel means of producing a hadronic state evolving entirely from gluons is discussed. The gluons are generated by the collision of two virtual photons which couple to an intermediate quark loop. The rate for the process is calculated in the effective-photon approximation using the known QED cross section for photon-photon scattering. It is found that the two-gluon production process is about 8% as large as the basic two-photon process which creates a quark-antiquark pair. The cross sections are calculated as a function of the transverse momentum of the produced jet. At a center-of-mass energy squared for the incident electron and positron of $s=900\mathrm{}$ ${\mathrm{GeV}}^2$, the two-gluon production rate is about 0.02 units of $R$ (one unit of $R$ is the point cross section for $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$), if the jets are required to have at least 3 GeV/c of momentum transverse to the beam direction. At $s=10\mathrm{}000$ ${\mathrm{GeV}}^2$, the corresponding rate is about 0.8 units of $R$.