Experimental study of the triple-gluon vertex

Abstract In four-jet events from e + e − →Z 0 →multihadrons one can separate the three principal contributions from the triple-gluon vertex, double gluon-bremsstrahlung and the secondary quark-antiquark production, using the shape of the two-dimensional angular distributions in the generalized Nachtmann-Reiter angle θ NR ∗ and the opening angle of the secondary jets. Thus one can identify directly the contribution from the triple-gluon vertex without comparison with a specific non-QCD model. Applying this new method to events taken with the DELPHI-detector we get for the ratio of the colour factor N c to the fermionic Casimir operator C F : N c C F = 2.55 ± 0.55 ( stat. ) ± 0.4 ( fragm. + models ) ± 0.2 ( error in bias ) in agreement with the value 2.25 expected in QCD from N c =3 and C F = 4 3 .