English

Determination of the strong coupling constant using matched NNLO+NLLA predictions for hadronic event shapes in e+e- annihilations

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2009-09-24 v1

Abstract

We present a determination of the strong coupling constant from a fit of QCD predictions for six event-shape variables, calculated at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) and matched to resummation in the next-to-leading-logarithmic approximation (NLLA). These event shapes have been measured in e+e- annihilations at LEP, where the data we use have been collected by the ALEPH detector at centre-of-mass energies between 91 and 206 GeV. Compared to purely fixed order NNLO fits, we observe that the central fit values are hardly affected, but the systematic uncertainty is larger because the NLLA part re-introduces relatively large uncertainties from scale variations. By combining the results for six event-shape variables and eight centre-of-mass energies, we find alpha_s(MZ)= 0.1224 +/- 0.0009 (stat) +/- 0.0009 (exp) +/- 0.0012 (had) +/- 0.0035 (theo), which improves previously published measurements at NLO+NLLA. We also carry out a detailed investigation of hadronisation corrections, using a large set of Monte Carlo generator predictions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0906.3436,
  title  = {Determination of the strong coupling constant using matched NNLO+NLLA predictions for hadronic event shapes in e+e- annihilations},
  author = {G. Dissertori and A. Gehrmann-De Ridder and T. Gehrmann and E. W. N. Glover and G. Heinrich and G. Luisoni and H. Stenzel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.3436},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

33 pages, mult. figures