Inclusive production of neutral pions in hadronic Z decays

A measurement of the inclusive production of pi0 mesons in hadronic Z decays is presented and compared to Monte Carlo model predictions. The analysis is based on approximately 2 million hadronic events recorded with the ALEPH detector at LEP at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 91.2 GeV. Neutral pions are reconstructed using photons from conversion pairs and photons measured in the electromagnetic calorimeter. The inclusive pi0 momentum spectrum is measured in the range from 0.025 < x(p) = p/p(beam) < 1 to be 4.80 +/- 0.07(stat) +/- 0.31(sys). The differential inclusive pi0 cross section has also been measured as a function of transverse momentum with respect to the event plane (p_T^in and p_T^out_T).