Measuring the charges of QCD jets

We investigate the effects of perturbative branching upon the accuracy with which one can determine the charge of the underlying QCD quantum from the charge structure of a given hadronic jet. We show explicitly how at asymptoticQ ² we lose all such charge information. We investigate these effects at current PETRA energies using the Monte Carlo program of Fox and Wolfram; and find that a reasonably accurate charge determination is still possible at these energies. We suggest the variation of the jet charge structure with multiplicity, at a given energy, as a sensitive probe of the onset of perturbative branching inside jets.