Test of the flavour independence of αs
Abstract
Using about 950 000 hadronic events collected during 1991 and 1992 with the ALEPH detector, the ratios r b = bs=udsc s and r uds = uds s =cbs have been measured in order to test the avour independence of the strong coupling constant s . The analysis is based on event{shape variables using the full hadronic sample, two b-quark samples enriched by lepton tagging and lifetime tagging, and a light-quark sample enriched by lifetime antitagging. The combined results are r b = 1:002 0:023 and r uds = 0:971 0:023.
This paper has been withdrawn.