Charged Particle Multiplicities in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

Using the H1 detector at HERA, charged particle multiplicity distributions in deep inelastic ep scattering have been measured over a large kinematical region. The evolution with $W$ and $Q^2$ of the multiplicity distribution and of the multiplicity moments in pseudorapidity domains of varying size is studied in the current fragmentation region of the hadronic centre-of-mass frame. The results are compared with data from fixed target lepton-nucleon interactions, $e^+e^-$ annihilations and hadron-hadron collisions as well as with expectations from QCD based parton models. Fits to the Negative Binomial and Lognormal distributions are presented.