QCD radiative corrections to ${\gamma }^{\ast }{\gamma }^{\ast }\to$ hadrons

Abstract

We compute the order-$\text{as}$ corrections to the total cross section and to jet rates for the process $\text{epem}\to \text{epem}+$ hadrons, where the hadrons are produced through crossed-channel quark exchange in the hard scattering of two off-shell photons originating from the incoming leptons. We use a next-to-leading order general-purpose partonic Monte Carlo event generator that allows the computation of a rate differential in the produced leptons and hadrons. We compare our results with the available experimental data for $\text{epem}\to \text{epem}+$ hadrons at LEP2.

Comments: 25 pages Latex; 1 style file and 14 figures included