Measurement of α from τ decays

Abstract

We present measurements of spectral moments extracted from the invariant mass distributions of the final states of hadronic τ decay products recorded in the CLEO detector. From a fit of theoretical predictions to the measurements of spectral moments and the total hadronic decay width of the τ, we determine the strong coupling constant and a set of non-perturbative QCD parameters. The strong coupling constant is measured to be αs(mτ) = 0.306 ± 0.024, which when extrapolated to the Z mass, yields αs(Mz) = 0.114 ± 0.003.