2 v 1 4 J ul 1 99 7 ANGULAR INTERMITTENCY AND ANALYTICAL QCD PREDICTIONS

We present a comparison of local multiplicity fluctuations in angular phase-space intervals with first-order QCD predictions. The data are based on 810k hadronic events at √ s ≃ 91.2 GeV collected with the L3 detector at LEP during 1994. Recently, progress has been made to derive analytical QCD predictions for angular intermittency [1–3]. Attempts have been undertaken by the DELPHI Collaboration to compare the predictions of [1] with the data for hadronic Z o decay [4]. In this paper we extend this study and present a first quantitative comparison of the theoretical first-order QCD predictions [2, 3] with the L3 data, emphasizing the behavior of normalized factorial moments of orders q = 2,. .. , 5 in angular phase-space intervals.