Measurement of the partial decay width $R_{b}^{0}=αmma_^{- }/αmma_{had}$ of the Z with the DELPHI detector at LEP

Abstract

The partial decay width of the Z to bb̅ quark pairs has been measured by the DELPHI detector at LEP. B-hadrons, containing b-quarks, were tagged by several methods using tracks with large impact parameters to the primary vertex complemented sometimes by event shape variables or using leptons with high transverse momentum relative to the hadron. In order to reduce the systematic uncertainties, in all methods the b-tagging efficiency has been extracted directly from the data. Combining all methods, the value: $${αmma_^{- }⩈er αmma_{had}}=0.2216pm 0.0016(stat.)pm0.0021(syst.)$$ was found, where the cc̅ production fraction was fixed to its Standard Model value.