Study of b-quark mass effects in multijet topologies with the DELPHI detector at LEP

The effect of the heavy b-quark mass on the two, three and four-jet rates is studied using LEP data collected by the DELPHI experiment at the Z peak in 1994 and 1995. The rates of b-quark jets and light quark jets (ℓ=uds) in events with n=2, 3, and 4 jets, together with the ratio of two and four-jet rates of b-quarks with respect to light-quarks, R_n ^bℓ, have been measured with a double-tag technique using the CAMBRIDGE jet-clustering algorithm. A comparison between experimental results and theory (matrix element or Monte Carlo event generators such as PYTHIA, HERWIG and ARIADNE) is done after the hadronisation phase. Using the four-jet observable R₄ ^bℓ, a measurement of the b-quark mass using massive leading-order calculations gives: This result is compatible with previous three-jet determinations at the M_Z energy scale and with low energy mass measurements evolved to the M_Z scale using QCD renormalisation group equations.