V_us From Hadronin Tau Decays

Abstract

We study the reliability of extractions of |V_{us}| based on flavor-breaking hadronic tau decay sum rules. The ``(0,0) spectral weight'', proposed previously as a favorable candidate for this extraction, is shown to produce results having poor stability with respect to s_0, the upper limit on the relevant spectral integral, suggesting theoretical errors much larger than previously anticipated. We argue that this instability is due to the poor convergence of the integrated D=2 OPE series. Alternate weight choices designed to bring this convergence under better control are shown to produce significantly improved stability, and determinations of |V_{us}| which are both mutually compatible, and consistent, within errors, with values obtained by other methods.