Joint Extraction of m_s and V_us from Hadronic Tau Decays

We study the simultaneous determination of m_s and V_us from flavor-breaking hadronic tau decay sum rules using weights designed to bring under better control problems associated with the slow convergence of the relevant D=2 OPE series. Much improved stability and consistency is found as compared to the results of conventional analyses based on the ``(k,0) spectral weights''. Results for m_s are in excellent agreement with those of recent strange scalar and strange pseudoscalar sum rule analyses, as well as recent lattice analyses, while those for V_us agree within errors with the output from recent lattice-based Gamma[K_{mu 2}]/Gamma[pi_{mu 2}] and K_{\ell 3}-based analyses. Very significant error reductions are shown to be expected, especially for V_us, once the improved strange spectral data from the B factory experiments becomes available.