Soft-particle spectra as a probe of interconnection effects in hadronic W+W- events

Cross-talk between the W+ and W- sources of hadron production at LEP2 offer s a hope to learn about basic properties of QCD, but at the same time threa tens high-precision measurements of the W boson mass. Directly visible effe cts are not expected to be large, however. It is, therefore, important to d evelop methods to measure the level of interconnection in the data - 'conne ctometers'. In this article we study one particular set of observables, nam ely the reduced rate of low-momentum particle production caused by reconnec tion. In realistic scenarios the expected signals are at the border of visi bility, but not quite beyond reach. Special studies on kaons and protons, o r with other subsets of the data, could provide supporting evidence. We als o show how LEP1 Z(0) events could bf used to define an alternative referenc e sample.