Calculation of exclusive decay modes of the tau

Abstract

We update the calculation of the decays of the \ensuremath{\tau} lepton into various modes using recent data on electron-positron annihilation into hadrons plus bounds that follow from isotopic-spin conservation. Comparison is made with exclusive branching-ratio data and inclusive charged-prong-distribution measurements in \ensuremath{\tau} decays, and the difficulty in accounting for all the one-charged-prong decays as a sum of exclusive decay modes is discussed.