Neutral-current effects in quantum-chromodynamic four-jet production

Abstract
We investigate the influence of parity-violating neutral currents on QCD four-jet production in e+e annihilation. Explicit expressions for the squared matrix elements in general weak models are presented. It is shown that in the standard model axial-vector currents change the acoplanarity distributions normalized to the total cross section only at the 103 level. Chirality effects of the four jets are also strongly suppressed. However, angular asymmetries of the acoplanarity distributions are found to be 20-60%.