An improved measurement of Rb using a double tagging method

Abstract

This paper describes an update of the double tagging measurement of the fraction, Rb, of Z0 → bb̄ events in hadronic Z0 decays, with statistics improved by including the data collected in 1994. The presence of electrons or muons from semileptonic decays of bottom hadrons and the detection of bottom hadron decay vertices were used together to obtain an event sample enriched in Z0 → bb̄ decays. The efficiency of the bb̄ event tagging was obtained from the data by comparing the numbers of events having a bottom signature in either one or both thrust hemispheres. Efficiency correlations between opposite event hemispheres are small (< 0.5%) and well understood through comparisons between the real..