NEXT-TO-NEXT-TO-LEADING ORDER QCD ANALYSIS OF THE GROSS-LLEWELLYN SMITH SUM-RULE AND THE HIGHER TWIST EFFECTS

We present the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD analysis of the Gross-Liewellyn Smith (GLS) sum rule in deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering, taking into account dimension-two, twist-four power correction. We discuss in detail the renormalization scheme dependence of the perturbative QCD approximations, propose a procedure for an approximate treatment of the quark mass threshold effects and compare the results of our analysis to the recent experimental data of the CCFR Collaboration. From this comparison we extract the value of the strong coupling constant alpha(s)nnl(M(Z), MSBAR)=0.115+/-0.001 (stat.)+/-0.005 (syst)+/-0.003 (twist)+/-0.0005 (scheme). We stress the importance of an accurate measurement of the GLS sum rule and in particular of its Q2 dependence.