Heavy-quark recombination in Z^0 decay

Abstract

We briefly review the recent advances of heavy-quark recombination mechanism. This mechanism predicts a class of power-suppressed 3-jet events in $Z^0$ decay, such as $b\bar{b}q$ and $b\bar{b}\bar{q}$. Furthermore, heavy quark fragmentation function also receives a contribution from this mechanism. Some light can be shed on the scaling of the maximum of the fragmentation function for S-wave heavy hadrons. We finally comment on a new variant of this mechanism which has important impact on the precision electroweak physics.

4 pages, 2 figures, prepared for CIPANP2003: Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics, New York City, May 19-24, 2003