Measurement of the cross section for high-pT hadron production in the scattering of 160-GeV/c muons off nucleons

The differential cross section for the production of charged hadrons with high transverse momenta in the scattering of 160 GeV/c muons off nucleons at low photon virtualities has been measured at the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The results, which cover transverse momenta from 1.1 GeV/c to 3.6 GeV/c, are compared to a perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD) calculation, in order to evaluate the applicability of pQCD to this process in the kinematic domain of the experiment. The shape of the calculated differential cross section as a function of transverse momentum is found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, but the absolute scale is underestimated by next-to-leading order pQCD. The inclusion of all-order resummation of large logarithmic threshold corrections reduces the discrepancy from a factor of 3 to 4 to a factor of 2. The dependence of the cross section on the pseudorapidity and on the virtual photon energy fraction is investigated. Finally the dependence on the charge of the hadrons is discussed.