Study of the Strong Coupling Constant Using $\mathit{W}+Jet$ Processes

The ratio of the number of $W+1\mathrm{}$ jet to $W+0\mathrm{}$ jet events is measured with the D0 detector using data from the 1992–93 Tevatron Collider run. For the $W\to e\nu$ channel with a minimum jet $E_T$ cutoff of 25 GeV, the experimental ratio is $0.065\pm 0.003\left(\mathrm{stat}\right)\pm 0.007\left(\mathrm{syst}\right)$. Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for various parton distributions agree well with each other and are all over 1 standard deviation below the measurement. Varying the strong coupling constant ${\alpha }_s$ in both the parton distributions and the partonic cross sections simultaneously does not remove this discrepancy.