High energy photoproduction of large transverse-momentum π0 mesons: A quantitative test of QCD

Abstract The first results on inclusive photoproduction of π 0 at transverse momenta up to 4 GeV/ c , using incident γ energies between 50 and 150 GeV are presented. A comparison is made with inclusive π 0 production obtained, in the same experiment, with incident π − . Using the π − data to parametrize the hadronic behaviour of the photon, significant differences are observed in quantitative agreement with QCD Compton scattering and corrections thereof.