Measurement of cross sections and leptonic forward-backward asymmetries at theZ pole and determination of electroweak parameters

Abstract

We report on the measurement of the leptonic and hadronic cross sections and leptonic forward-backward asymmetries at theZ peak with the L3 detector at LEP. The total luminosity of 40.8 pb−1 collected in the years 1990, 1991 and 1992 corresponds to 1.09·106 hadronic and 0.98·105 leptonicZ decays observed. These data allow us to determine the electroweak parameters. From the cross sections we derive the properties of theZ boson: $$\begin{gathered} M_Z = 91195 \pm 9MeV\Gamma _{\rm Z} = 2494 \pm 10MeV \hfill \\ \Gamma _{had} = 1748 \pm 10MeV\Gamma _\ell = 83.49 \pm 0.46MeV \hfill \\ \end{gathered} $$ assuming lepton universality. We obtain an invisible width of Γinv=496.5±7.9 MeV which, in the Standard Model, corresponds to a number of light neutrino species ofN v=2.981±0.050.Using also the three leptonic forward-backward asymmetries and the average tau polarization, we determine the effective vector and axial-vector coupling constants of the neutral weak current to charged leptons to be: $$\bar g^\ell v = - 0.0378_{ - 0.0042}^{ + 0.0045} \bar g^\ell _A = - 0.4998 \pm 0.0014.$$ Within the framework of the Standard Model, and including our measurements of the\(Z \to b\bar b\) forward-backward asymmetry and partial decay width, we derive an effective electroweak mixing angle of\(sin^2 \bar \theta _W = 0.2326 \pm 0.0012\). We obtain an estimate for the strong coupling constant, αS=0.142 ± 0.013 and for the top-quark mass,m t =158 +32−40 ±19(Higgs) GeV, where the second error arises due to the uncertainty in the Higgs-boson mass.