A study of angular correlations in 4-jet final states of hadronicZ0 decays

Four-jet final states of hadronicZ0 decays, observed ine+e− annihilation around 91 GeV centre of mass energy, are analysed in terms of observables that are sensitive to the non-abelian gauge structure of QCD. After correction for detector resolution and fragmentation effects, the data are compared to QCD and also to predictions of the Abelian vector gluon gauge theory. The theoretical expectations are calculated in both second order and leading logarithmic approximation of perturbation theory. The data are compatible with QCD but cannot be described by the predictions of the Abelian vector gluon models. From the measured topological distributions, upper limits for the relative production rates of$$q\bar qq\bar q$$ final states are derived.