Searching for jets using a transverse-energy trigger

We have studied the question of whether prominent jet structure would be expected in hadron-hadron collision events which are selected on the basis of having a large amount of transverse energy carried by the final-state hadrons. Using a computer simulation based on the Field-Feynman parton scattering model, we find that such a transverse-energy selection does not yield events predominantly having clear jet structure; this finding is in agreement with data from experiment NA5 at CERN. The basic reason for this effect is that high-multiplicity fragmentation of the beam and target spectator partons will contribute a substantial fraction of the transverse energy while also diluting the jet structure