Radiative return at NLO and the measurement of the hadronic cross-section in electron–positron annihilation

Electron–positron annihilation into hadrons plus an energetic photon from initial state radiation allows the hadronic cross-section to be measured over a wide range of energies. The full next-to-leading order QED corrections for the cross-section for annihilation into a real tagged photon and a virtual photon converting into hadrons are calculated where the tagged photon is radiated off the initial electron or positron. This includes virtual and soft photon corrections to the process and the emission of two real hard photons: . A Monte Carlo generator has been constructed, which incorporates these corrections and simulates the production of two charged pions or muons plus one or two photons. Predictions are presented for centre-of-mass energies between 1 and 10 GeV, corresponding to the energies of DANE, CLEO-C and B-meson factories. Received: 14 December 2001 / Published online: 5 April 2002