NEXT-TO-LEADING QCD CALCULATION OF THE HEAVY QUARK FRAGMENTATION FUNCTION

We present the results of a next-to-leading order QCD calculation of the fragmentation function of b flavoured hadrons at LEP. We find that the addition of the next-to-leading effects improves the stability of the result under changes of the evolution scale and does not alter drastically the leading order prediction. Our next-to-leading calculation suggests that, if we neglect non-perturbative effects, the b fragmentation function is peaked at fairly large values of x, even if the average value of x is not necessarily large. © 1990.