  We propose to model hadronization of parton showers in QCD jets through a
hybrid approach involving quark recombination and string fragmentation. This is
achieved by allowing gluons at the end of the perturbative shower evolution to
undergo a non-perturbative splitting into quark and antiquark pairs, then
applying a Monte-Carlo version of instantaneous quark recombination, and
finally subjecting remnant quarks (those which have not found a recombination
partner) to Lund string fragmentation. When applied to parton showers from the
PYTHIA Monte Carlo event generator, the final hadron spectra from our
calculation compare quite well to PYTHIA jets that have been hadronized with
the default Lund string fragmentation. Our new approach opens up the
possibility to generalize hadronization to jets embedded in a quark gluon
plasma.
