Measurement of alpha s with Radiative Hadronic Events

Abstract

Hadronic final states with a hard isolated photon are studied using data taken at centre-of-mass energies around the mass of the Z0 boson with the OPAL detector at LEP. The strong coupling alpha S is extracted by comparing data and QCD predictions for event shape observables at average reduced centre-of-mass energies ranging from 24 GeV to 78 GeV, and the energy dependence of alpha S is studied. Our results are consistent with the running of alpha S as predicted by QCD and show that within the uncertainties of our analysis event shapes in hadronic Z0 decays with hard and isolated photon radiation can be described by QCD at reduced centre-of-mass energies. Combining all values from different event shape observables and energies gives alpha S (Mz)=0.1182 pm 0.0015(stat.) pm 0.0101(syst.).