text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The measurements of the forward-backward asymmetry of $`𝒃`$-quarks from $`𝒆^\mathbf{+}𝒆^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}𝒁\mathbf{}𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ production offer the most precise determination of the weak mixing angle at LEP. This gives a sensitive test of Standard Model  predictions of electroweak radiative corrections and hence constrain the allowed range of the Higgs boson mass.

The polar angle distribution of the $`𝒃`$-quark in the $`𝒆^\mathbf{+}𝒆^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}𝒁\mathbf{}𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ process is forward-backward asymmetric:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{𝒅𝝈_{𝒃\overline{𝒃}}}{𝒅\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽_𝒃}}\mathbf{=}𝝈_{𝒃\overline{𝒃}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{𝟑}}{\mathrm{𝟖}}}\mathbf{\left(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}^\mathrm{𝟐}𝜽_𝒃\mathbf{+}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{𝟖}}{\mathrm{𝟑}}}𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽_𝒃\mathbf{\right)}\mathbf{,}`$
where $`𝜽_𝒃`$ is the angle between the incoming electron and the outgoing $`𝒃`$-quark. In this paper an improved measurement of $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ using inclusive $`𝒃`$-hadron decays is presented, based on the data sample recorded by ALEPH on the $`𝒁`$ from 1991 to 1995. The analysis takes advantage of a reprocessing of LEP I data with improved charged particle tracking and of neural network techniques making maximum use of the available event information.

The method of selecting events containing $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ quark pairs is upgraded with respect to the previous analysis . The $`𝒃`$-tagging algorithm based on the impact parameters of charged particle tracks is complemented with information from displaced secondary vertices, event shape variables and lepton identification. This leads to a 15% reduction of the statistical uncertainty. The estimate of the $`𝒃`$-quark direction is based upon the hemisphere charge method , but also incorporates information from fast kaon tagging and separated primary and secondary vertex charge estimators. The fraction of incorrect charge tags is reduced by 10% with respect to the previous measurement, implying a 20% further reduction of the statistical uncertainty. Another new feature is the control of systematic uncertainties by use of double tag methods for both flavour and charge tags, which yields a reduction of the systematic uncertainty by about a factor of two.

Although lepton identification is used to select events in the $`𝒃`$-tag algorithm, no use is made in the hemisphere charge method of the lepton beyond that of an ordinary charged track in the detector. This reduces the correlation with the forthcoming ALEPH $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ analysis based on semileptonic final states.

## 2 The method

The measurement of $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ requires knowledge of the direction of the $`𝒃`$-quark from $`𝒁\mathbf{}𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ decay. The quark-antiquark axis is estimated using the reconstructed thrust axis, the direction of which is given throughout this paper by a positive value for the cosine of the thrust polar angle, $`\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽`$. Each event is then divided into two hemispheres, F and B, by a plane perpendicular to the thrust axis. The forward hemisphere, F, is defined as the one into which the incoming electron points. The F-B orientation of the $`𝒃`$-quark is determined on a statistical basis by estimating the hemisphere charges.

Hemisphere charges, $`𝑸_𝐅`$ and $`𝑸_𝐁`$, are formed using a neural network designed to optimise the separation power between $`𝒃`$\- and $`\overline{𝒃}`$-quarks. The neural network also performs well for lighter quark flavours, albeit not in an optimal way. A forward-backward asymmetry for flavour $`𝒇`$ at a given value of $`\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽`$ is then proportional to the mean charge flow, $`\mathbf{}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒇\mathbf{}`$, between forward and backward hemispheres in pure $`𝒇\overline{𝒇}`$ events :

$`\mathbf{}𝑸_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇\mathbf{}`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{}𝑸_𝐅^𝒇\mathbf{}𝑸_𝐁^𝒇\mathbf{}`$ (1)
$`\mathbf{=}`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{𝒏_{\mathrm{𝐭𝐨𝐭}}^𝒇}}\mathbf{\left(}𝒏_𝐅^𝒇\mathbf{}𝑸_𝒇\mathbf{}𝑸_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{}\mathbf{+}𝒏_𝐁^𝒇\mathbf{}𝑸_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{}𝑸_𝒇\mathbf{}\mathbf{\right)}`$
$`\mathbf{=}`$ $`𝜹_𝒇𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{𝟖}}{\mathrm{𝟑}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽}{\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}^\mathrm{𝟐}𝜽}}\mathbf{,}`$
where $`𝒏_𝐅^𝒇`$ ($`𝒏_𝐁^𝒇`$) is the number of events with the primary quark from $`𝒁`$ decay emitted into the forward (backward) hemisphere, and $`𝜹_𝒇\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}𝑸_𝒇\mathbf{}𝑸_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{}`$ is the average difference between the charges measured in the hemispheres of the quark and anti-quark, called the charge separation for flavour $`𝒇`$. As shown in , the same sample of events used to measure $`\mathbf{}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒇\mathbf{}`$ can also be used to extract $`𝜹_𝒇`$. This can be understood by considering a single hemisphere charge measurement, $`𝑸_𝒇`$, which can be written as :

$`𝑸_𝒇\mathbf{=}{\displaystyle \frac{𝜹_𝒇}{\mathrm{𝟐}}}\mathbf{+}𝓡_𝒇𝐚𝒏𝒅𝑸_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{=}{\displaystyle \frac{𝜹_{\overline{𝒇}}}{\mathrm{𝟐}}}\mathbf{+}𝓡_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{,}`$
where $`𝓡`$ represents the measurement fluctuation due to fragmentation and detector effects. The product of the two hemisphere charges then averages to :

$`\mathbf{}𝑸_𝒇𝑸_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}𝑸_𝐅𝑸_𝐁\mathbf{}\mathbf{=}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathbf{}𝜹_𝒇^\mathrm{𝟐}}{\mathrm{𝟒}}}\mathbf{+}\mathbf{}𝓡_𝒇𝓡_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{}\mathbf{,}`$
defining $`𝜹_𝒇\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}𝜹_{\overline{𝒇}}`$. The measurement fluctuation correlation, $`\mathbf{}𝓡_𝒇𝓡_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{}`$, arises from effects of charge conservation, sharing a common event axis and crossover of particles close to the hemisphere boundary. It is then useful to define :

$`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`𝝈^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{(}𝑸_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}𝝈^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{(}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐭𝐨𝐭}}^𝒇\mathbf{)}`$ (2)
$`\mathbf{=}`$ $`𝜹_𝒇^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{}\mathbf{\hspace{0.33em}4}\mathbf{}𝓡_𝒇𝓡_{\overline{𝒇}}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}𝑸_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇\mathbf{}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{+}\mathbf{}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐭𝐨𝐭}}^𝒇\mathbf{}^\mathrm{𝟐}`$
$`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{\left[}𝜹_𝒇\mathbf{\left(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒇\mathbf{\right)}\mathbf{\right]}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{,}`$
where $`𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐭𝐨𝐭}}^𝒇`$ is the total charge measured in an $`𝒇\overline{𝒇}`$ event. Thus, the observable $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇`$ is equal to $`𝜹_𝒇`$ to within a correction term, $`𝒌_𝒇`$, depending on the polar angle and taking an average value of 9% for heavy flavours in this analysis. Compared with the charge separation itself, the $`𝒌_𝒇`$ correction term is less sensitive to the details of quark fragmentation and detector resolution . Relying on the Monte Carlo prediction of $`𝒌_𝒇`$, it is possible to extract $`𝜹_𝒇`$ by fitting the quantities $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇`$ to a range of measurements of the flavour combined $`\overline{𝜹}`$ using the relation:

$$\overline{𝜹}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{=}\underset{𝒇\mathbf{=}𝒖\mathbf{,}𝒅\mathbf{,}𝒔\mathbf{,}𝒄\mathbf{,}𝒃}{\mathbf{}}𝓟_𝒇\mathbf{\left(}\overline{𝜹}_𝒇\mathbf{\right)}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟒}\mathbf{}𝑸_𝐅𝑸_𝐁\mathbf{}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}𝑸_{𝐅𝑩}\mathbf{}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{+}\mathbf{}𝑸_{𝐭𝒐𝒕}\mathbf{}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{,}$$
(3)
where $`𝓟_𝒇`$ are flavour purities of the event sample under study. As described in Section 8, these purities are also measured in the data.

For each value of $`\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽`$ the mean charge flow, the purities and the charge separations are measured. The $`𝒃`$-quark asymmetry is then determined according to Equation (1), averaged over quark flavours:

$$\mathbf{}𝑸_{𝐅𝑩}\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}\mathbf{=}\underset{𝒇\mathbf{=}𝒖\mathbf{,}𝒅\mathbf{,}𝒔\mathbf{,}𝒄\mathbf{,}𝒃}{\mathbf{}}𝓟_𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}𝜹_𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}\mathbf{,}$$
(4)
where

$$𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇\frac{\mathrm{𝟖}}{\mathrm{𝟑}}\frac{\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽}{\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽^\mathrm{𝟐}}\mathbf{.}$$
(5)
Rearranging Equation (4),

$$𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒃\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{𝓟_𝒃\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}𝜹_𝒃\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}}\mathbf{\left(}\mathbf{}𝑸_{𝐅𝑩}\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}\underset{𝒇\mathbf{=}𝒖\mathbf{,}𝒅\mathbf{,}𝒔\mathbf{,}𝒄}{\mathbf{}}𝓟_𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}𝜹_𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}\mathbf{\right)}\mathbf{.}$$
(6)
The $`𝒃`$-quark forward-backward asymmetry, $`𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒃`$, is extracted from a simultaneous fit to the measurements in nine angular bins in the range $`\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{<}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.95}`$. A tiny, but non-zero, correction is applied to take into account the flavour dependence of the acceptance in each angular bin.

## 3 The ALEPH detector

The ALEPH detector is described in detail in , and its performance in . The tracking system consists of two layers of double-sided silicon vertex-detector (VDET), an inner tracking chamber (ITC) and a time projection chamber (TPC). The VDET single hit resolution is 12$`𝝁`$m at normal incidence for both the $`𝒓\mathit{\varphi }`$ and $`𝒓𝒛`$ projections and 22$`𝝁`$m at maximum polar angle. The polar angle coverage of the inner and outer layers are $`\mathbf{|}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽\mathbf{|}\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.84}`$ and $`\mathbf{|}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽\mathbf{|}\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.69}`$ respectively. The ITC provides up to 8 $`𝒓\mathit{\varphi }`$ hits at radii 16 to 26 cm relative to the beam with an average resolution of 150$`𝝁`$m and has an angular coverage of $`\mathbf{|}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽\mathbf{|}\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.97}`$. The TPC measures up to 21 space points per track at radii between 38 and 171 cm, with an $`𝒓\mathit{\varphi }`$ resolution of 170$`𝝁`$m and a $`𝒛`$ resolution of 740$`𝝁`$m and with an angular coverage of $`\mathbf{|}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽\mathbf{|}\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.96}`$. In addition, the TPC wire planes provide up to 338 samples of ionisation energy loss ($`𝒅𝑬\mathbf{/}𝒅𝒙`$).

Tracks are reconstructed using the TPC, ITC and VDET which are immersed in a 1.5T axial magnetic field. This provides a transverse momentum resolution of $`𝝈\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{/}𝒑_𝑻\mathbf{)}`$ = 0.0006 (GeV/$`𝒄`$)-1 for 45 GeV muons. Multiple scattering dominates at low momentum and adds a constant term of 0.005 to $`𝝈\mathbf{(}𝒑_𝑻\mathbf{)}\mathbf{/}𝒑_𝑻`$.

Outside of the TPC, the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) consists of 45 layers of lead interleaved with proportional wire chambers. The ECAL is used to identify photons and electrons and gives an energy resolution $`𝝈\mathbf{(}𝑬\mathbf{)}\mathbf{/}𝑬`$ = 0.18/$`\sqrt{𝑬\mathbf{/}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}}\mathbf{+}\mathbf{0.009}`$ for isolated particles. The hadron calorimeter (HCAL) is formed by the iron of the magnet return yoke interleaved with 23 layers of streamer tubes. It is used to measure hadronic energy and, together with two surrounding layers of muon chambers, to identify muons.

The information from the subdetectors is combined in an energy flow algorithm  which gives a list of charged and neutral track momenta.

Recently the LEP I data have been reprocessed using improved reconstruction algorithms. In particular, the VDET hits are distributed among tracks according to a global $`𝝌^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ minimisation procedure which improves the hit association efficiency by more than 2%. Information from TPC wires is now used in addition to the pad information to improve the coordinate resolution by a factor of two in $`𝒛`$, and by 30% in $`𝒓\mathit{\varphi }`$ for low momentum tracks. Similarly the pad information is added to the $`𝒅𝑬\mathbf{/}𝒅𝒙`$ information from TPC wires, increasing the fraction of tracks with a useful $`𝒅𝑬\mathbf{/}𝒅𝒙`$ measurement to almost 100% and providing on average a two sigma separation between pions and kaons with momenta above 2.5 GeV/$`𝒄`$.

## 4 Monte Carlo simulation

The analysis makes use of a Monte Carlo sample (MC) of 8.1 million simulated hadronic $`𝒁`$ decays as well as two dedicated heavy flavour samples of 4.9 million $`𝒁\mathbf{}𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ decays and 2.4 million $`𝒁\mathbf{}𝒄\overline{𝒄}`$ decays. The simulation is based on JETSET  with parameters tuned to reproduce inclusive particle spectra and event shape distributions measured in hadronic $`𝒁`$ decays .

In the MC simulation, the most relevant physics input parameters have been adjusted, using the re-weighting technique, to the recently measured values  shown in Table 1. The fragmentation of heavy quarks into hadrons is assumed to follow the model of Peterson et al.  with parameters tuned to match the values of the mean heavy hadron fractions of the beam energy reported in the table.

## 5 The neural net $`𝒃`$-tag

Due to the long lifetime and high mass of $`𝒃`$-hadrons, $`𝒃`$-jets have several characteristic properties. Six discriminating variables are combined using a neural network to tag $`𝒃`$-quark jets. A similar scheme is used by ALEPH to identify $`𝒃`$-quark jets in searches for neutral Higgs bosons conducted at LEP II .

The jets are clustered with the JADE algorithm using a $`𝒚_{𝒄𝒖𝒕}`$ value of 0.02, and for each jet six variables are defined: two of them are lifetime-based; a third one is based on the transverse momentum of identified leptons; the last three are based on jet-shape properties. These quantities are

1. $`𝐏_{\mathrm{𝐣𝐞𝐭}}`$: probability of the jet being a light quark ($`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$) jet based upon impact parameters of tracks in the jet .
2. $`𝚫𝝌_{\mathrm{𝐬𝐯𝐱}}^\mathrm{𝟐}`$: the vertex $`𝝌^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ difference between assigning tracks in the jet both to the secondary and primary vertices compared to assigning all tracks to the primary vertex. This is based upon a secondary vertex pattern recognition algorithm which searches for displaced vertices via a three-dimensional grid point search ;
3. $`𝒑_𝐓`$ of identified leptons  with respect to the jet axis;
4. $`𝓢^𝐛`$: the boosted sphericity of the jet defined to be the sphericity of final state charged and neutral particles in the rest frame of the jet;
5. Multiplicity/ln(Ejet): the charged and neutral particle multiplicity of the jet divided by the natural logarithm of the jet energy in GeV;
6. $`𝚺𝒑_𝐓^\mathrm{𝟐}`$: the sum of squared transverse momenta, $`𝒑_𝐓^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, of each charged or neutral particle with respect to the jet axis.

Among the six input variables, the lifetime tags have the largest weight. However, the inclusion of the other variables increases the $`𝒃`$-quark discriminating power, especially at the most forward angles that are not covered by the vertex detector. A hemisphere $`𝒃`$-tag is defined as the maximum neural net output value among the jets in the hemisphere with energies exceeding 10 GeV.

Prior to the application of the lifetime reconstruction algorithms in the MC, the track parameters have been given additional smearing and the VDET additional hit inefficiency according to a procedure described in . This is necessary in order to render the MC distributions of the lifetime tags in good agreement with data. Small discrepancies still remain and combine in the neural network to give the differences between the distributions of the $`𝒃`$-tag shown in Figure 1. Deviations up to about 5% between data and simulation are seen in some $`𝒃`$-tag bins and for this reason the $`𝒃`$-quark purity as a function of $`𝒃`$-tag is determined from the data themselves.

## 6 The neural net charge tag

A neural network is also used to determine hemisphere charges. This technique has been employed earlier for CP violation studies in $`𝑩^\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{/}\overline{𝑩}^\mathrm{𝟎}`$ decays as described in . In the present analysis information regarding lepton identification is left out from the tag.

In order to achieve high tagging performance independently of the $`𝒃`$-hadron species, momentum and polar angle, several charge estimators are combined. These charge tags are complemented with other variables, which do not carry information about the $`𝒃`$-hadron charge in themselves, but are correlated with the relative tagging power of the charge estimators, thereby allowing an optimal combination to be achieved in the whole phase space. The two types of input variables are described separately in Sections 6.1 and 6.2.

### 6.1 Charge estimators

Eight charge estimators are used to provide information on the initial charge state of $`𝒃`$-quark hemispheres as inclusively as possible. These are:

1. The jet charge. This is the charge estimator used in the previous analysis : the weighted sum of particle charges in a hemisphere, where the weights are the particle momenta along the thrust axis, $`𝒑_𝐋`$, raised to the power $`𝜿`$. Four different values of $`𝜿`$ are used for inputs to the neural net: 0.0, 0.5, 1.1 and 2.2. These focus on correspondingly higher values of track momenta but are of course highly correlated. Such charge estimators work well for all species of $`𝒃`$-hadrons.
2. The secondary vertex charge. Using a topological vertexing algorithm combining information from all charged tracks in the hemisphere , a best estimate for a secondary vertex position is obtained in each hemisphere. An estimate of the charge of this vertex is calculated as:

$$𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐯𝐭𝐱}}\mathbf{=}\underset{𝒊\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬}}{\mathbf{}}𝒘_𝒊𝒒_𝒊\mathbf{,}$$
(7)
where $`𝒘_𝒊`$, calculated by a dedicated neural net , is the probability that track $`𝒊`$ comes from the secondary vertex and $`𝒒_𝒊`$ is the track charge. This estimator provides a high quality charge tag for $`𝑩^\mathbf{\pm }`$ hemispheres, and also helps to indicate which hemispheres are more likely to contain a neutral $`𝑩`$ meson.
3. The weighted primary vertex charge. For $`𝑩^\mathrm{𝟎}`$ hemispheres the secondary vertex charge carries little information, but in this case the fragmentation tracks close in phase space to the $`𝑩^\mathrm{𝟎}`$ have some correlation with the primary $`𝒃`$-quark charge. Therefore a charge estimator, $`𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐏𝐯𝐭𝐱}}`$, is calculated according to :

$$𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐏𝐯𝐭𝐱}}\mathbf{=}\underset{𝒊\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬}}{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{}𝒘_𝒊\mathbf{)}𝒑_𝐋^𝒊𝒒_𝒊\mathbf{/}\underset{𝒊\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬}}{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{}𝒘_𝒊\mathbf{)}𝒑_𝐋^𝒊\mathbf{.}$$
(8)
4. The weighted secondary vertex charge, $`𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐒𝐯𝐭𝐱}}`$, is calculated in a similar manner, replacing the weight $`\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{}𝒘_𝒊\mathbf{)}𝒑_𝐋^𝒊`$ by $`𝒘_𝒊\mathbf{\left(}𝒑_𝐋^𝒊\mathbf{\right)}^{\mathbf{0.3}}`$ with the aim of improving the tagging for both charged and neutral $`𝑩`$-decays via leading particle effects from the secondary decay.
5. Fast kaon identification is formed by another dedicated sub-net  trained to identify charged kaons from $`𝒃`$-hadron decays. The output for the most kaon-like particle in the hemisphere is signed by the charge of the particle and used as a charge estimator.

### 6.2 Control variables

The following variables are used as inputs to the neural net in order to provide it with some topological and $`𝒃`$-hadron specific information:

1. $`\mathbf{|}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽\mathbf{|}`$ is included since it is correlated with the quality of the secondary vertex reconstruction and hence with the tagging power of the estimators relying on the separation between tracks from the primary and secondary vertex.
2. The reconstructed $`𝐛`$-hadron momentum is included because the relative accuracy of the various charge estimators depends on the $`𝒃`$-hadron momentum. An estimator of this momentum is constructed from the jet closest to the line-of-flight of the $`𝒃`$-hadron. The estimator is the sum of the charged track momenta in the jet, weighted by the probability that they come from the secondary vertex, and the projections of the neutral momenta onto the line-of-flight of the $`𝒃`$-hadron. The missing energy in the hemisphere is also added.
3. The reconstructed proper time of the $`𝐛`$-hadron is used based on the reconstructed $`𝒃`$-hadron momentum and the measured decay length. The intention here is to incorporate the increased probability of $`𝑩_𝒅^\mathrm{𝟎}`$ mixing at long proper times.
4. The spread of track separation weights i.e. the width of the $`𝒘_𝒊`$ factors distribution in a given hemisphere. This allows the net to de-weight those charge estimators which suffer from an ambiguous allocation of tracks to the primary and secondary vertices in cases of high charged multiplicities and/or poor vertexing.

For the asymmetry calculation, the difference between the neural net outputs of the two hemispheres is used. This is shown in Figure 2 together with the MC prediction. The charge separation is seen to be reasonably well simulated, but with a slightly larger width in data than in MC (there is also a small difference in the average value of the two distributions, but this is too small to be visible on the plot).

## 7 Event selection

The data set used for this analysis consists of four million hadronic $`𝒁`$ decays recorded by ALEPH during the period 1991 to 1995 in a centre-of-mass energy range of $`𝑴_𝒁\mathbf{\pm }\mathrm{𝟑}`$GeV. Events are selected according to the standard ALEPH hadronic event selection based on charged track information . This selection has an efficiency of $`\mathbf{97.5}\mathbf{\%}`$ and the backgrounds from $`𝒁`$ decays to $`𝝉^\mathbf{+}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}`$ and $`𝜸𝜸`$ interactions are estimated to be $`\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.3}`$% each. These backgrounds are reduced to the 10-5 level after the application of the subsequent cuts and can be safely neglected.

The average beam-spot position is determined every 75 events and used to constrain the event-by-event interaction point. In order to remove lifetime information from the tracks, these are projected onto the plane perpendicular to their parent jets (unless they point behind the interaction point found in a first iteration). Combining these projections with the beam-spot position fixes the interaction point to a precision of $`\mathrm{𝟓𝟎}\mathbf{\times }\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}\mathbf{\times }\mathrm{𝟔𝟎}𝝁𝐦^\mathrm{𝟑}`$ in horizontal, vertical and beam directions respectively.

The thrust axis is determined in each event from all charged tracks and calorimeter clusters using the ALEPH energy flow algorithm . To ensure that a good fraction of the event is contained within the detector acceptance, the cosine of the thrust axis polar angle is required to be less than $`\mathbf{0.95}`$. In order to be able to evaluate the hemisphere $`𝒃`$-tag and charge tag it is required that each hemisphere has at least one charged track and at least one jet with energy greater than 10 GeV. With these selection cuts a sample of 3,734,425 hadronic $`𝒁`$ decays is retained for the remainder of the analysis.

In order to make use of double-tag methods for determining flavour purities, the $`𝒃`$-tag range between zero and one is divided into eight sub-intervals as shown in Figure 3. The 672,111 events which are located in the region indicated by the black area in Figure 3, labelled E, are the ones accepted for the $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}`$ analysis. The acceptance is less strict in the forward region which is not covered by the vertex detector and therefore has a broader distribution of $`𝒃`$-tags.

## 8 Determination of flavour purities

The fractions of primary quark flavours in the selected event sample are measured in the data using the double tag method, that has been used previously in e.g. the ALEPH $`𝑹_𝒃`$ measurement .

In each of nine angular intervals, eight $`𝒃`$-tag sub-intervals are defined as indicated in Figure 3, out of which only seven are mutually independent and the eighth is considered as “not tagged”. These give rise to 28 doubly tagged event classes and 7 singly tagged classes: $`𝒏_{𝒊𝒋}`$ and $`𝒏_{𝒊\mathrm{𝟖}}`$, which are related to the tagging efficiencies by:

$`𝒏_{𝒊𝒋}`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝒇}{\mathbf{}}}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{}𝜹_{𝒊𝒋}\mathbf{)}\mathit{ϵ}_𝒊^𝒇\mathit{ϵ}_𝒋^𝒇𝒄_{𝒊𝒋}^𝒇𝑹_𝒇𝒏_{𝐡𝒂𝒅}\mathbf{;}𝒊\mathbf{}𝒋\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝒏_{𝒊\mathrm{𝟖}}`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝒇}{\mathbf{}}}\mathrm{𝟐}\mathit{ϵ}_𝒊^𝒇𝑹_𝒇\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{}{\displaystyle \underset{𝒋\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟕}}{\mathbf{}}}\mathit{ϵ}_𝒋^𝒇𝒄_{𝒊𝒋}^𝒇\mathbf{)}𝒏_{𝐡𝒂𝒅}\mathbf{;}𝒊\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟕}\mathbf{,}`$ (9)
where $`\mathit{ϵ}_𝒊^𝒇`$ is the probability for a primary quark of flavour $`𝒇`$ to be located in interval $`𝒊`$, $`𝒄_{𝒊𝒋}^𝒇`$ describes correlations between the $`𝒃`$-tag values in the two hemispheres, $`𝑹_𝒇`$ is the $`𝒁\mathbf{}𝒇\overline{𝒇}`$ fraction of the $`𝒁`$ hadronic decays and $`𝒏_{\mathrm{𝐡𝐚𝐝}}`$ is the total number of events in the sample under consideration. The flavour index, $`𝒇`$, runs over three flavour classes only ($`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$, $`𝒄`$ and $`𝒃`$), hence efficiencies and correlation factors are averaged over the three light flavours.

Various assumptions are made to reduce the number of unknown parameters in Equation (9). The hemisphere correlations are taken from MC simulation and the values of $`𝑹_𝒇`$ are taken from previous measurements. Furthermore, it is necessary to fix the ratio of the two smallest efficiencies, where $`\mathit{ϵ}_\mathrm{𝟏}^{𝒖𝒅𝒔}\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.0008}`$ and $`\mathit{ϵ}_\mathrm{𝟐}^{𝒖𝒅𝒔}\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.0013}`$ according to the simulation. The ratio between these numbers is taken from simulation.

The remaining 20 unknown efficiencies $`\mathit{ϵ}_𝒊^𝒇`$ are determined from a fit using Equations (9) leaving 15 remaining degrees of freedom in the fit.

The fitted efficiencies are combined to give event tag efficiencies by summing over the fiducial region labelled E in Figure 3:

$$\mathit{ϵ}_𝑬^𝒇\mathbf{=}\underset{𝒊\mathbf{,}𝒋\mathbf{}𝑬}{\mathbf{}}\mathit{ϵ}_𝒊^𝒇\mathit{ϵ}_𝒋^𝒇𝒄_{𝒊𝒋}^𝒇\mathbf{,}$$
(10)
and from these efficiencies the three purities are constructed as:

$$𝓟_𝑬^𝒇\mathbf{=}\frac{\mathit{ϵ}_𝑬^𝒇𝑹_𝒇}{\mathit{ϵ}_𝑬^𝒃𝑹_𝒃\mathbf{+}\mathit{ϵ}_𝑬^𝒄𝑹_𝒄\mathbf{+}\mathit{ϵ}_𝑬^{𝒖𝒅𝒔}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{}𝑹_𝒃\mathbf{}𝑹_𝒄\mathbf{)}}\mathbf{,}$$
(11)
where the used $`𝑹_𝒇`$ fractions are shown in Table 6. The result of the fit is shown in Table 2. The covariance matrix of the fitted efficiencies is propagated to the event-tag purities with diagonal elements also shown in Table 2 and correlation coefficients being typically $`\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟗𝟎}`$% , +45% and $`\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟖𝟎}`$% for the $`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$-$`𝒄`$, the $`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$-$`𝒃`$ and the $`𝒄`$-$`𝒃`$ purity correlations, respectively. The $`𝝌^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ of the nine independent fits at different $`\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽`$ averages 0.99 per degree of freedom.

Already from Figure 1 it is seen that the efficiencies in the highest $`𝒃`$-tag bins are higher in the data than in the MC. The fit determines that this enhancement is slightly larger for light and charm quarks than for $`𝒃`$-quarks, resulting in a $`𝒃`$ purity which is about 0.5% lower than predicted by the MC in the selected sample.

## 9 Determination of quark charge separations

The mean values of the hemisphere charge separations, $`𝜹_𝒇`$, are determined from data in each bin of $`\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽`$ using the following procedure.

The data sample is subdivided into 14 bins with flavour compositions ranging from almost pure $`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$ to almost pure $`𝒃`$ flavour. The sum of squares of the two hemisphere $`𝒃`$-tags is used to define the bins and the flavour compositions of these new bins are derived from the fit to the data described in the previous section.

In each bin of this event $`𝒃`$-tag variable, $`\overline{𝜹}`$ is measured according to Equation (3). A fit is performed using the 14 $`\overline{𝜹}`$ measurements and the right side of Equation (3) with the flavour specific values $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒃`$, $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒄`$ and $`\overline{𝜹}_{𝒖𝒅𝒔}`$ as free parameters. Since the $`𝒃`$-tags in the 14 bins bias the charge estimator differently, additional assumptions taken from MC are needed in order to compare the 14 $`\overline{𝜹}`$ measurements. For each flavour, the differences between the $`\overline{𝜹}`$ in a given bin and the $`\overline{𝜹}`$ in the E-region, $`𝜷\mathbf{=}\overline{𝜹}_𝐄\mathbf{}\overline{𝜹}_{\mathrm{𝐛𝐢𝐧}}`$, are held fixed at their MC values. Thus, for each flavour, the fit shifts $`\overline{𝜹}`$ by a fixed amount in all bins, minimising the following $`𝝌^\mathrm{𝟐}`$:

$`𝝌^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝒊\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟏}}{\overset{\mathrm{𝟏𝟒}}{\mathbf{}}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathbf{\left(}\overline{𝜹}_{\mathrm{𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐬}\mathbf{,}𝒊}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}_{𝒇\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟏}}^\mathrm{𝟑}𝓟_𝒊^𝒇\mathbf{\left(}\overline{𝜹}_𝒇𝒓_𝒇\mathbf{}𝜷_𝒊^𝒇\mathbf{\right)}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{\right)}^\mathrm{𝟐}}{\mathbf{\left(}𝚫\overline{𝜹}_{\mathrm{𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐬}\mathbf{,}𝒊}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{\right)}^\mathrm{𝟐}}}\mathbf{,}`$ (12)
where $`𝒊`$ labels the $`𝒃`$-tag bins and $`𝒇`$ the flavours ($`𝒃`$, $`𝒄`$ and $`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$). The $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇`$ appearing in the $`𝝌^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ refers to MC events in the E-region and the correction factors $`𝒓_𝒇`$ are the three free parameters of the fit.

The inputs to the fit, averaged over all $`\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝜽`$, are shown in Table 3 for $`𝒃`$\- and $`𝒄`$-quarks together with the flavour combined output and the MC prediction. The fit reproduces accurately the $`𝒃`$-tag dependence of $`\overline{𝜹}`$. The angular dependence of the fitted parameters is shown in Figure 4 and, since the ratios between fitted and predicted values are consistent with being constant over angles, their average values are quoted below:

$`𝒓_𝒃\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.995}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.004}\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝒓_𝒄\mathbf{=}\mathbf{1.031}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.011}\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝒓_{𝒖𝒅𝒔}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{1.009}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.009}\mathbf{.}`$
The average correlation coefficients of the error matrix are $`\mathbf{}`$64% between $`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$ and $`𝒄`$, 25% between $`𝒖𝒅𝒔`$ and $`𝒃`$ and $`\mathbf{}`$49% between $`𝒄`$ and $`𝒃`$. The average $`𝝌^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ probability is 0.72 over the independent fits in nine bins of polar angle.

The fitted values of $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇`$ are translated into the charge separations, $`𝜹_𝒇`$ by Equation (2), where the charge correlation correction factors, $`\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒇\mathbf{)}`$, are taken from MC. These factors vary with polar angle, averaging 1.086 for $`𝒄`$-quarks and 1.092 for $`𝒃`$-quarks.

In the fit of $`𝑨_{𝐅𝑩}^𝒃`$ from Equation (6), the values for the charge separations, $`𝜹_𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}`$, are thus the MC values corrected by the $`𝒓_𝒇\mathbf{(}𝜽\mathbf{)}`$ factors. The ratios between individual light quark charge separations are taken from MC. In summary, the following values are used (averaging over polar angle and showing only the diagonal elements of the statistical error matrix):

$`𝜹_𝒃`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.3143}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0014}\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝜹_𝒄`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{+}\mathbf{0.3733}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0039}\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝜹_𝒔`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.1929}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0016}\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝜹_𝒅`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.1547}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0013}\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝜹_𝒖`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{+}\mathbf{0.2598}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0022}\mathbf{.}`$
This charge separation corresponds to an average event mis-tag of 25.6% for $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ events. The result of the asymmetry fit to the peak data is

$`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃\mathbf{(}\sqrt{𝒔}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{91.232}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{\hspace{0.25em}0.0997}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0027}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕\mathbf{)}\mathbf{.}`$
## 10 Systematic errors

The determinations of the sample purity, the charge separation and the forward–backward asymmetry itself all rely to some extent on samples of Monte Carlo events. The features of the simulation most relevant for the analysis have been identified and varied within their errors in order to estimate the systematic uncertainty of the measurement as described in detail in the following sections.

### 10.1 The uds purity at large $`𝒃`$-tags

In the fit yielding the flavour purities of the selected event sample it was assumed that ratio of the tiny efficiencies for selecting a light flavour with $`𝒃`$-tag $`\mathbf{>}\mathbf{0.98}`$ and for selecting a light flavour with $`\mathbf{0.94}\mathbf{<}𝒃`$-tag $`\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.98}`$ was correctly predicted by the MC to be 0.62, averaged over polar angle. A systematic uncertainty on this ratio of $`\mathbf{\pm }\mathrm{𝟑𝟎}`$% is estimated by varying the track parameter smearing and the gluon splitting rates to heavy flavours in the MC. Propagating this uncertainty to the asymmetry yields a variation of $`\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.00037}`$.

### 10.2 Correlations between hemisphere $`𝒃`$-tags

The correlation factors ($`𝒄_{𝒊𝒋}^𝒇`$ in Equation (9)) are taken from Monte Carlo simulation. The influence of the correlations on the purities, via the fitted flavour efficiencies, is limited by Equation (11) because the $`𝒃`$-quark purity is high, 88% on the average. The correlation coefficient with the largest impact on the $`𝒃`$ purity is the negative correlation for observing both hemispheres in the highest $`𝒃`$-tag bin: $`𝒄_{\mathrm{𝟏𝟏}}^𝒃\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.02}`$ in the central region of the detector. It is due to the pull on the shared reconstructed primary vertex exerted by a secondary vertex from $`𝒃`$-hadron decay. If that coefficient is changed by an amount $`\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.01}`$, the $`𝒃`$ purity changes by the amount $`\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{2.3}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟒}`$ in the central region. The other coefficients carry impacts on the flavour purities of size $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟒}`$ or less for a one percent change in the coefficient.

In order to estimate the uncertainty in the correlation coefficients, the input parameters to the MC given in Table 1 are changed, one by one by the re-weighting technique, to the one $`𝝈`$ higher values. Two additional re-weighted MC samples are studied in order to cover effects of QCD gluon radiation and of fragmentation. In one sample the angles separating the two selected $`𝒃`$-jets are forced to agree with data and in another sample the charged multiplicity of the primary vertex is forced to agree with data. The largest effects on the $`𝒃`$ purities arise from changing the $`𝒙_𝒃`$ beam energy fraction, the charge particle multiplicities and the inter-jet angles, ranging from typically $`\mathbf{\pm }\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟓}`$ in the central region to $`\mathbf{\pm }\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟒}`$ at the most forward angles. The individual changes are added in quadrature to produce the total variation in the asymmetry of 0.00001.

There could be effects other than $`𝒃`$-physics parameters causing an inaccurate simulation of the correlation factors. The possibilities include inaccuracies in the simulation of vertexing and of QCD effects. Therefore, a study of additional systematic errors is carried out along the lines of the ALEPH $`𝑹_𝒃`$ measurement . Here, the contribution to the correlation from a given variable $`𝒗`$ is calculated as:

$$𝒄_{𝒊𝒋}\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\frac{\mathbf{}\mathbf{(}𝒇_𝒊\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}𝒈_𝒋\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}𝒈_𝒊\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}𝒇_𝒋\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝒗}{\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{(}\mathbf{}𝒇_𝒊\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}𝒅𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{(}\mathbf{}𝒇_𝒋\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}𝒅𝒗\mathbf{)}}$$
(13)
where $`𝒇_𝒊\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}`$ is the fraction of hemispheres, among all hemispheres with the variable situated between $`𝒗`$ and $`𝒗\mathbf{+}𝒅𝒗`$, having the tag $`𝒊`$. Similarly $`𝒈_𝒊\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}`$ is the corresponding fraction with the opposite hemisphere tagged by tag $`𝒊`$. The chosen variables, $`𝒗`$, are the thrust polar and azimuthal angles, an estimator of the $`𝒃`$-hadron momentum and the six input variables to the $`𝒃`$-tagging neural network. Since the most important correlations are those involving $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ events, the ten most significant of those are studied. In order to avoid having to subtract a very large non-$`𝒃`$ background in some bins, a soft $`𝒃`$-tag is placed before evaluating the integrals. This soft $`𝒃`$-tag leaves a 64% pure $`𝒃`$-sample.

For the azimuthal angle, where no significant correlation is expected, the result of Equation (13) is indeed unity within a precision of $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟑}`$. The rest of the variables do produce correlations, but the differences between data and MC are all between $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟑}`$ and $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟐}`$ and hence their contribution to the error on the measured asymmetry (via the flavour purities) is again very small, in total 0.00001.

Until now only correlations in $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ events have been studied. Although the individual correlations for the lighter quarks have very little impact, the possibility of a combined effect of a large number of correlations has been investigated by simply ignoring all of them in the fit (except at the very most forward angle where geometrical effects are important). This results in a change in $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ of +0.00002. A summary of all errors connected with the estimation of flavour purities is given in Table 4.

### 10.3 Systematic uncertainties on charge separations

Various assumptions contribute to systematic uncertainties on the determination of the charge separations, $`𝜹_𝒇`$. In a first step, $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒃`$, $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒄`$ and $`\overline{𝜹}_{𝒖𝒅𝒔}`$ are extracted from a fit to data, where the assumed flavour purities and charge bias corrections in the different $`𝒃`$-tag bins contribute to the systematic error together with the statistical errors of the fit. In a second step, the constant of proportionality, $`\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒇\mathbf{)}`$, between $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇`$ and $`𝜹_𝒇`$ contributes to the uncertainty. These systematic uncertainties are summarised in Table 5 and discussed in detail in the following.

* Flavour purities \- This is evaluated by using the purities predicted by the MC instead of the fitted purities. The full changes in the fitted values of $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇`$ are propagated to the error on the asymmetry.
* Corrections for $`𝐛`$-tag bias \- Two overlapping procedures are used to estimate this uncertainty:

1. Each of the $`𝒃`$-physics parameters listed in Table 1 are increased one at the time by one standard deviation, using re-weighted versions of the MC, and the differences in the fitted $`𝜹_𝒃`$ and $`𝜹_𝒄`$ are propagated to the asymmetry and entered as systematic errors in Table 5 . These estimates include the effect of the parameters on the charge correlation corrections discussed below. As in the case of hemisphere tag correlations, the effect of re-weighting the MC to agree with the observed primary vertex multiplicity and the observed distribution of inter-jet angles are also included. Finally, the $`𝑽𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓\mathbf{/}\mathbf{(}𝑽𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓\mathbf{+}𝑷𝒔𝒆𝒖𝒅𝒐𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒂𝒓\mathbf{)}`$ ratio in $`𝑫`$-meson production is varied within its experimental error of 0.05 .
    2. The values of $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒄`$ and $`\overline{𝜹}_{𝒖𝒅𝒔}`$ are fixed at their MC values instead of being left free in the fit. In this case Equation (3) can be solved directly for $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒃`$ in the E-region without any assumptions concerning bias corrections. The full difference between the result of this and the default result is taken as an independent contribution to the systematic error. This corresponds to an excursion in the fitted value of $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒄`$ by almost two times the other uncertainties on this quantity.
* Charge correlation corrections \- One contribution to the systematic error from the $`\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒇\mathbf{)}`$ factors is found by varying the input parameters of the MC as described above.

Another contribution is estimated, like in the case of hemisphere $`𝒃`$-tag correlations, from the difference between data and MC when building on the E-sample a “projection” of the hemisphere charge correlations along a series of observables, as follows:

$$\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒗\mathbf{)}^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{=}\frac{\mathbf{}\mathbf{\left(}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞}}^\mathbf{+}\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐨𝐩𝐩}}^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞}}^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐨𝐩𝐩}}^\mathbf{+}\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}\mathbf{\right)}𝑷\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}𝒅𝒗}{\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{}𝑸^\mathbf{+}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}𝑸^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}}\mathbf{,}$$
(14)
where $`𝑸^\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}`$ is the average positive or negative hemisphere charge, given the variable $`𝒗`$ in either the same or the opposite hemisphere, and $`𝑷\mathbf{(}𝒗\mathbf{)}`$ is the probability density of $`𝒗`$. Eight variables are chosen that are weakly correlated while covering the variables relevant for the charge determination. These are the thrust, the thrust axis direction, some inputs to the charge tagging neural net, the $`𝒃`$-tag and the $`𝒃`$-hadron momentum. The differences in $`\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒗\mathbf{)}`$ between data and MC are propagated to Table 5.

This procedure relates to the simulation of charge correlations for events in the selected sample consisting mostly of $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ events. Previous studies using the jet-charge technique  have assessed the uncertainty in $`𝒌_𝒄`$ separately. Using a weighting power of $`𝜿\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.5}`$ the value $`𝒌_𝒄\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.085}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.022}`$ was found, where the error includes systematic uncertainties. This value is equal to the charm charge correlation in the present study and its error is propagated as an additional contribution to Table 5.
* Light quark charge separations \- The light quark charge separations, $`𝜹_𝒖`$, $`𝜹_𝒅`$ and $`𝜹_𝒔`$, are taken from Monte Carlo, but corrected by the overall correction factor from the fit. Systematic uncertainties are ascribed according to the results of  which represent relative uncertainties of 2.1%, 4.0% and 1.5% for $`𝒖`$, $`𝒅`$ and $`𝒔`$ respectively. These errors are much larger than the error on the combined light quark $`\overline{𝜹}_{𝒖𝒅𝒔}`$ from the fit. However, when propagated through to $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$, the systematic uncertainties arising from light quark charges are small, in total 0.00003.
* Track parameter smearing \- The extra smearing and hit inefficiency mentioned in Section 5 also affects the charge tag. The effect of dropping these corrections to the MC altogether results in a change in the asymmetry of +0.00016 which is taken as an additional contribution to the systematic error.

### 10.4 Experimental systematic errors on $`𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}`$

For the measuring apparatus itself to produce a fake $`𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}`$, a forward-backward asymmetric bias in the charge measurement is needed. Such an effect could come from an asymmetry in the detector material, since nuclear interactions of the produced particles with this material give rise to an excess of charge which is measured by the total charge, $`𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐭𝐨𝐭}}`$, in data . The asymmetry of the material is estimated by measuring the forward-backward asymmetry of photons that have converted to $`𝒆^\mathbf{+}𝒆^{\mathbf{}}`$ pairs in the detector. This asymmetry is multiplied by the material charge component at each angle and subtracted from $`𝑸_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}`$, causing a shift in $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ by $`\mathbf{0.00016}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.00032}`$ which is taken as a contribution to the systematic error.

Another possible source of error is the modelling of the magnetic field in the extreme forward region. This is known to cause a slight difference in the momenta measured for positive and negative particles at momenta close to the beam energy and a correction, which is not quite forward-backward symmetric, is applied as default on the data to take out this effect. However, the effect on $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ from dropping the correction is very small ($`\mathbf{0.00002}`$) and this is added to the error.

### 10.5 Electroweak observables

Assumptions regarding electroweak observables other than $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$, e.g. $`𝑹_𝒃`$ and $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒄`$, belong to a special class, since they are important for the Standard Model interpretation of the result. Their values used in this analysis are taken from the Standard Model and are listed in Table 6 together with their impacts on the measured value of $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$. In case of the branching fractions $`𝑹_𝒇`$, the variation in one flavour is compensated by changes in the light quark $`𝑹_𝒇`$’s ($`𝒇\mathbf{=}𝒖𝒅𝒔`$) according to their relative magnitudes.

### 10.6 QCD correction

The radiation of gluons from the original quark pair can in principle lower the asymmetry. The effect is expected to be small with the present method, where the thrust-defined hemisphere charges are calibrated back to the charges of the primary quarks in these hemispheres using partly data and partly MC. However, this built-in correction may not be sufficient, since the hemispheres defined by the $`𝒒\overline{𝒒}`$ axis are not identical to those defined by the thrust. Therefore the asymmetry measured by repeating the analysis on the high statistics $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ MC is compared with the generator level asymmetry in the same selected sample of MC events. The generator level asymmetry is found to be higher by a factor $`\mathbf{1.0027}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0009}`$.

The most accurate calculation available of the full QCD correction in an unbiased sample of $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ events results in a correction factor $`\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝑪_{\mathrm{𝐐𝐂𝐃}}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{1.0354}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0063}`$ . The ratio of $`𝑪_{\mathrm{𝐐𝐂𝐃}}`$ to the same quantity calculated with the ALEPH MC is used to scale the residual QCD correction. Hereby the residual correction factor becomes $`\mathbf{1.0034}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0019}`$, where the error takes into account the statistical uncertainty and the fraction of the theoretical error which affects this analysis.

A summary of all the systematic errors is given in Table 7.

## 11 Cross-checks

### 11.1 Simultaneous fit to $`𝑹_𝒃`$

The selection efficiency fit which yields the flavour purities of the selected event sample has been checked by performing the fit on MC and verifying that the input efficiencies are indeed returned exactly. It has furthermore been checked that the distribution of $`𝒃`$-tags in the MC agrees with that measured in the data after re-weighting the MC by the ratio of fitted to simulated flavour efficiencies.

Finally, the overall $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ fraction, $`𝑹_𝒃`$, is left free in the fit. In order to get a stable fit, it is necessary to tie down some of the previously free parameters, and therefore the small $`𝒃`$-hemisphere efficiencies for $`𝒃`$-tags less than 0.6 are taken from MC in this case. The result (for the three million preselected hadronic $`𝒁`$ decays at peak energy) is $`𝑹_𝒃\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.2174}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0008}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕\mathbf{)}`$. This measured value is consistent with the world average ($`\mathbf{0.21643}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.00073}`$ ). The change in the asymmetry from letting $`𝑹_𝒃`$ float in the fit is $`\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.0005}`$, in agreement with the sensitivity shown in Table 6 and consistent with the uncertainty of the fit.

### 11.2 Lepton tagged events

For the $`\overline{𝜹}`$ fit, it has also been checked that it returns the input $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒇`$’s when applied to the MC.

The sample of events with an identified high–$`𝒑_𝑻`$ lepton offers an additional check on the assumptions entering the $`𝒃`$-charge tag. This check is, however, limited by uncertainties in the lepton tagging due to $`𝒄\mathbf{}𝒍`$, $`𝒃\mathbf{}𝒄\mathbf{}𝒍`$ and $`𝑩^\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{}\overline{𝑩}^\mathrm{𝟎}`$ transitions as well as lepton mis-identification. These uncertainties are reduced to below the $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟐}`$ level by placing a high–$`𝒑_𝑻`$ cut of 1.5 GeV/$`𝒄`$ on the lepton sample. The distribution of the signed difference between the two hemisphere charges in such events is shown in Figure 5. The sign of the lepton provides the $`𝒃\overline{𝒃}`$ orientation in the event and allows a measurement of $`𝜹_𝒃\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.3395}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0016}`$, after subtracting the 3.8% non-$`𝒃`$ background in this sample. This is a factor $`\mathbf{0.990}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.006}`$ smaller than the same quantity measured in the $`𝒒\overline{𝒒}`$ MC. The corresponding ratio between the $`\overline{𝜹}_𝒃`$’s was found to be $`\mathbf{0.995}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.004}`$ in Section 9. This then provides a check on the MC prediction of $`𝒌_𝒃`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒃\mathbf{)}}{\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{+}𝒌_𝒃\mathbf{)}^{\mathrm{𝐌𝐂}}}}\mathbf{=}{\displaystyle \frac{𝜹_𝒃}{𝜹_𝒃^{\mathrm{𝐌𝐂}}}}\mathbf{/}{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{𝜹}_𝒃}{\overline{𝜹}_𝒃^{\mathrm{𝐌𝐂}}}}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.995}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.007}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕\mathbf{)}\mathbf{.}`$
### 11.3 Stability checks

In order to study the stability of the analysis the accepted region in the plane of the two $`𝒃`$-tags is varied over a wide range. The results for peak data shown in Table 8 are consistent within statistical errors.

The measurements performed for each LEP I year in the data recorded at $`𝒁`$ peak energies are shown in Table 9. They are seen to be consistent with being constant.

## 12 Results and conclusions

The fit to Equation (6) is performed in three intervals of collision energy, $`\sqrt{𝒔}`$, with the results shown in Figure 6. The asymmetries are then multiplied by the QCD correction factor of $`\mathbf{1.0034}`$ giving, for the sample of events recorded closest to the $`𝒁`$ peak, the value:

$`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃\mathbf{(}\sqrt{𝒔}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{91.232}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.1000}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0027}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕\mathbf{)}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0011}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕\mathbf{)}\mathbf{.}`$
The corresponding values averaged over two off–peak energy ranges are

$`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃\mathbf{(}\sqrt{𝒔}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{89.472}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.0436}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0119}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕\mathbf{)}\mathbf{,}`$
$`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃\mathbf{(}\sqrt{𝒔}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{92.950}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.1172}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.0097}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕\mathbf{)}\mathbf{.}`$
The variation of $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ with centre-of-mass energy is shown in Figure 7 and compared with the Standard Model prediction. The three values are extrapolated to $`𝑴_𝒁\mathbf{=}\mathbf{91.1874}`$ GeV using ZFITTER , giving the combined value:

$`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃\mathbf{(}\sqrt{𝒔}\mathbf{=}𝑴_𝒁\mathbf{)}`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{0.0977}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{\hspace{0.17em}0.0025}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕\mathbf{)}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{\hspace{0.17em}0.0011}\mathbf{(}𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕\mathbf{)}`$
$`\mathbf{+}\mathbf{0.103}\mathbf{(}𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒄\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.06513}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.440}\mathbf{(}𝑹_𝒃\mathbf{}\mathbf{0.21585}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{.}`$
In order to interpret the result in terms of the Standard Model, a QED and $`𝒁\mathbf{}𝜸`$ interference correction of 0.0038 is applied according to  to give the pole asymmetry, $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^{\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}𝒃}`$, which is then iterated using BHM  until consistent values for $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^{\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}𝒃}`$, $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒄`$ and $`𝑹_𝒃`$ are reached. The result is

$`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^{\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}𝒃}`$ $`\mathbf{=}`$ $`\mathbf{0.1009}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{\hspace{0.17em}0.0027}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{\hspace{0.17em}0.0012}`$
using $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒄\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.0623}`$ and $`𝑹_𝒃\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.21653}`$. The errors have been obtained from iterating the value one standard deviation above the measured $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$. The corresponding weak mixing angle is

$`\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}^\mathrm{𝟐}𝜽_𝐖^{\mathrm{𝐞𝐟𝐟}}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.23193}\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{0.00056}\mathbf{.}`$
This is to date the best $`𝑨_{\mathrm{𝐅𝐁}}^𝒃`$ measurement \[2,26-34\] and provides the single most precise measurement of $`\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}^\mathrm{𝟐}𝜽_𝐖^{\mathrm{𝐞𝐟𝐟}}`$ at LEP. The value is in agreement with the present world average value .

## Acknowledgements

We wish to thank our colleagues from the accelerator divisions for the successful operation of LEP. It is also a pleasure to thank the technical personnel of the collaborating institutions for their support in constructing and maintaining the ALEPH experiment. Those of the collaboration from non-member states thank CERN for its hospitality.


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# Conversion Problems: How (Not) to Determine Molecular Masses in Dwarf Galaxies

## 1 Molecular Gas Masses and the Conversion Factor $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$

The determination of molecular gas masses in star forming dwarf irregular galaxies is crucial to assess the star formation process in dwarfs: Does it proceeed in the same way as in giant spiral galaxies, or are e.g. star formation efficiencies different? How large is the gas reservoir in dwarf galaxies, i.e. are dwarfs rated as ‘starbursts’ really undergoing a burst of activity or are they able to continue forming stars at the present rate for a significant fraction of the Hubble Time? Star formation in gas rich dwarfs also provides us with a local analogy to conditions in the high-redshift universe, since within the context of the hierarchical bottom-up scenario of galaxy formation we expect the building blocks of larger galaxies to have been small, metal-poor (low $`Z`$) systems similar to present-day dwarf galaxies.

However, the derivation of the molecular gas content of dwarf galaxies has been a long-standing problem. CO, as the only practical tracer of cold molecular gas, has been (and to some extent still is) notoriously diffucult to detect. Yet, star formation clearly takes place in many dwarf irregulars and Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies, as is shown in detail by investigations of their stellar populations.

Taylor, Kobulnicky & Skillman (1998) have argued that there is a threshold metallicity of $`12+\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{O}/\mathrm{H})7.9`$ below which CO is not detectable. This may be understood in terms of models of the structure of low metallicity molecular clouds suggested by e.g. Madden et al. (1997) and Bolatto, Jackson & Ingalls (1999): CO is present only in the cloud core, which is surrounded by an H2 envelope where carbon is in the form of CI or CII. In this ‘hidden H2’ scenario, the CO core may vanish entirely while molecular gas still is abundant if $`Z`$ is very low.

The (in)famous conversion factor $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}=I(\mathrm{CO})/N(\mathrm{H}_2)`$ allows an easy estimate of the molecular gas mass based on measuring just the 12CO(1–0) transition. $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ has been calibrated in the disk of the Milky Way. Even there, values vary between $`1.610^{20}`$ cm-2(K km s-1)-1 (Hunter et al. 1997) and $`310^{20}`$ cm-2(K km s-1)-1 (commonly used in the 80’s). While it is likely that the ‘correctly’ calibrated value – if it exists – is slightly below $`210^{20}`$ cm-2(K km s-1)-1, a ‘Standard’ Conversion Factor (SCF) of $`2.310^{20}`$ cm-2(K km s-1)-1 (Strong et al. 1988) is widely used.

The existence of a SCF can be motivated somewhat heuristically assuming that (a) CO counts clouds, (b) the emission is optically thick and thermalized and (c) the individual clouds are virialized, which implies a size-linewidth relation. Then, a relation of the form $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}=\mathrm{const}n(\mathrm{H}_2)^{1/2}T_{\mathrm{kin}}^1`$ is obtained. If the molecular ISM is dominated by ‘typical’ molecular clouds with similar (average) densities and temperatures, $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ can be expected to be constant. In the ‘hidden H2’ scenario outlined above, it should, however, not be surprising if a different (larger) value of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ is found.

## 2 The Virial Method – and its Drawbacks

To determine $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$, an independent way of measuring the cloud mass (or, equivalently if the distance to the source is known, the H2 column density) is needed. The most obvious such method is the calculation of viral masses, by using $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}[\mathrm{M}_{}]=190\mathrm{\Delta }v^2[\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}]D/2[\mathrm{pc}]`$. The constant depends slightly on the assumed density profile of the cloud. In practice, both the cloud diameter $`D`$ and the velocity width $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ can be obtained from high resolution CO observations.

It can, of course, be debated whether molecular clouds in dwarf galaxies are in fact virialized. A size-linewidth relation consistent with the one found for the Milky Way and nearby spirals seems to hold for large ($`M10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$) Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) in nearby dwarfs, e.g. NGC 1569, IC 10 or the SMC (Taylor et al. 1999). While virialization does not necessarily follow from this (a similar relation is valid for cirrus clouds which are clearly not in virial equilibrium), the assumption is at least not obviously erroneous. The situation is more critical for more distant dwarf galaxies like NGC 4214 (Walter et al. 2001) or Haro 2 (Fritz 2000). In these cases, the resolution, even with interferometers, is too poor to resolve GMCs – the structures seen are Giant Molecular Associations (GMAs) which do not follow the size-linewidth relation and are likely not virialized. If this complication is ignored, $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ is unlikely to be a true measure of $`M_{\mathrm{cloud}}`$. In addition, the linewidth can be affected by systematic streaming motions or rotation, external pressure, magnetic fields, a stellar or atomic gas component, etc.

Virial masses have been used to determine $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ for a number of dwarf galaxies. The values found vary significantly, from $`(6.6\pm 1.5)`$ SCF in NGC 1569 (which may be slightly too high, Taylor et al. 1999) to $`(1.2\pm 0.7)`$ SCF in NGC 4214 (Walter et al. 2001). For Haro 2, Fritz (2000) derives $`(2.9\pm 0.8)`$ SCF if the CO(1–0) line is used and $`(1.2\pm 0.6)`$ SCF for the higher resolution observations in the (2–1) transition. ‘Typical’ values from the literature for a number of dwarfs, including IC 10, give $`(2\mathrm{}3)`$ SCF; these form the basis of the general conclusion that $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ in dwarfs is somewhat higher than the SCF. All galaxies for which results are given here have comparable metallicities.

Are the differences that are derived real, or due to (systematic) errors? The ‘hidden H2’ should be largely included in the virial masses, at least as long as size and linewidth of the observed CO complex are dominated by the relative movement of small CO cores within a larger bound complex. Given that the typical sizes of the resolved units exceed 100 pc, this is likely.

The dependence of $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ on the resolution is an obvious, but quite possibly decisive, problem. Fig. 1 illustrates the deconvolution of a molecular complex in NGC 4214 into subunits for which virial masses are derived. It is evident that there is a strong dependence on the velocity resolution, which in this case is very high. Since the square of the velocity width enters $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, a lower velocity resolution would increase the virial mass significantly and increase the low value of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ found for NGC 4214. The two different values given for Haro 2 clearly illustrate the influence of linear resolution on $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$.

¿From this, it may seem that the high values of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ usually derived for dwarf galaxies could be artifacts of too low a velocity or linear resolution. However, we find a high $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ for the nearby NGC 1569, where the resolution is good. Also, some unresolved clumps in NGC 4214 yield $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}<\mathrm{SCF}`$, which is unexpected since in an unresolved clump $`D`$ should be an upper limit, leading to an overestimate of the virial mass. Thus, resolution cannot explain all the variation in $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ found in dwarfs of similar metallicity. It is, however, an issue that has to be considered carefully.

Even more basic are the varying definitions of a ‘cloud’ that are employed. Is it correct to always use the smallest unit that can be resolved? At some point, we will either miss the ‘hidden H2’ envelopes and just regard the single CO cores, and/or we will use subunits that are moving within a larger bound entity. In the first case, we will clearly underestimate $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$, in the second case, $`D`$ will be too small, while $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ may be too large, with an uncertain outcome for $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$. It is likely that with a resolution of $`100`$ pc, this stage is not yet reached, but the very small values of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ for unresolved clumps in NGC 4214 serve as a warning. Even the methods employed for size determinations vary from using e.g. the FWHM, the 90% of flux contour or sophisticated deconvolution routines (e.g. based on information entropy, Fritz 2000).

Given the uncertainties of the virial masses, it is interesting to examine another, seemingly entirely independent, method to derive $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$.

## 3 The Radiative Transfer Method – and its Drawbacks

If at least three CO transitions, including at least one of a rare isotopomer like 13CO, are measured, a simple radiative transfer model can be employed to derive the average properties of the emitting gas. For a given density, metallicity, isotope ratio (and velocity gradient, in the commonly used LVG approximation of radiative transfer), $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ is obtained as $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}=n(\mathrm{H}_2)/(\mathrm{grad}vT_{\mathrm{MB}})`$. Fig. 2 illustrates the general principle.

The method is less independent of the virial method than it might seem since it implicitly assumes a size-linewidth relation (see Fritz 2000 for details). A major drawback is observational, however: the 13CO transition(s) essential for the analysis are extremely faint and difficult to measure with present instruments, especially since the quality of the spectra should be high enough to obtain reliable line ratios. Thus, such measurements exist for only very few dwarfs, and they are confined to the molecular peak positions which may not be typical of the ISM properties in general.

The most crucial limitation of the method is the extremely local nature of the value of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ it yields. Only the CO-emitting cores are taken into account, since the (average) local properties of the CO emission itself are analysed. The envelopes (i.e. the hidden H2) are not included. Since the properties within the cores can be expected to be similar to those of molecular clouds in metal rich galaxies, a value for $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ that is close to the SCF may be expected – and is indeed found for Haro 2 ($`X_{\mathrm{CO}}=(0.7\mathrm{}1.3)`$ SCF, Fritz 2000). Note, however, that this is not inconsistent with what is derived using the virial method at high resolution.

Even simple one-component radiative transfer models show that $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ can vary by a factor of $`>10`$ only depending on excitation, without changing the metallicity at all. If $`Z`$ is decreased, the local $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ for a given $`n/T`$ increases slightly, but the changing size of the CO-emitting core is likely to dominate this effect. In contrast, $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ drops significantly in a low density, high temperature environment, as is qualitatively expected from the $`n^{1/2}/T_{\mathrm{kin}}`$ relation. This situation is not likely to be relevant for low-$`Z`$ dwarfs since this ‘diffuse’ gas component is likely to be devoid of CO or dissociated entirely. This is confirmed by the ‘disk-GMC-like’ properties derived for the CO emission in Haro 2, suggesting fairly low temperatures and high densities. Still, the detections of CO(3–2) emission in a number of dwarfs (see the contribution by Mühle et al. in these preceedings) show that extended, warm molecular gas is present (and detectable) in star forming dwarf galaxies. Exact densities and temperatures for this component remain to be determined.

The ‘diffuse gas’ scenario is very important for metal-rich starburst systems, where $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ is found to be lower than the SCF by a factor of 3 … 8.

## 4 Final Considerations

In summary, the general picture of the ‘correct’ way of determining molecular masses in dwarf galaxies remains somewhat clouded. Clearly, an analytical metallicity-XCO-relation of the form $`\mathrm{log}X_{\mathrm{CO}}/\mathrm{SCF}=a+b(12+\mathrm{log}[\mathrm{O}/\mathrm{H}])`$ with $`a=5.9\mathrm{}9.3`$ and $`b=0.65\mathrm{}1.0`$ as proposed by e.g. Arimoto, Sofue & Tsojimoto (1996) is close to useless for any individual galaxy. It does describe the general trend correctly, but with a scatter $`>5`$ for a given $`Z`$, it misses all complications and individualities.

Despite the strong possibility of systematic errors in the determination of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ in dwarfs, some variation is very likely to be real. Even the generally elevated value of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ in dwarfs compared to the SCF is not undisputed, but we need to carefully eliminate possible sources of error before drawing far-reaching conclusions. Most prominently, we need to consider how ‘global’ the $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ we determine is – even with the virial method, only one molecular complex at a time is probed, and the conversion factor derived may well differ in different places in a given galaxy. Showing the dependence of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ on factors other than $`Z`$ (e.g. the UV-field, cosmic rays, the gas morphology, pressure, magnetic fields etc.) is indeed an important goal of further studies. Clearly, $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ can never be a ‘constant’ to be blindly applied to ‘determine’ molecular gas masses. Instead, it needs to be probed by all possible means and can then be a valuable diagnostic of ISM properties.

References

Arimoto, N., Sofue, Y., Tsojimoto, T. 1996, PASJ 48, 275

Bolatto, A.D., Jackson, J.M., & Ingalls, J.D. 1999, ApJ 513, 275

Fritz, T. 2000, PhD Thesis, Bonn University

Hunter, S.D., Bertsch, D.L., Catelli J.A., et al. 1997, ApJ 481, 205

Madden, S.C., Poglitsch, A., Geis, N., Stacey, G.J., Townes, C.H. 1997, ApJ 483, 200

Strong, A.W., Bloemen, J.B.G.M., Dame, T.M.. et al. 1988, A&A 207, 1

Taylor, C.L., Kobulnicky, H.A., & Skillman, E.D. 1998, AJ 116, 2746

Taylor, C.L., Hüttemeister, S., Klein, U., Greve, A. 1999, A&A 349, 424

Walter, F., Taylor, C.L., Hüttemeister S., Scoville, N.Z., McIntyre, V. 2001, AJ, in press (astro-ph/0011098)


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

At future lepton colliders, we will be able to determine the mass of the (remnant of) toponium 1S state from a threshold scan of the $`t\overline{t}`$ cross section. The statistical error in this measurement was estimated to be about $`50`$ MeV with a moderate integrated luminosity of $`30\mathrm{f}\mathrm{b}^1`$ . On the other hand we can predict the mass of toponium 1S state as a function of the top quark pole-mass $`M_t`$ and QCD coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$ in perturbative QCD:

$`M(1\mathrm{S}(t\overline{t}))`$ $`=`$ $`2M_t{\displaystyle \frac{4}{9}}\alpha _s^2M_t+𝒪(\alpha _s^3M_t).`$ (1)
Using this relation the top quark mass can be extracted from the measurement of the 1S peak position of the $`t\overline{t}`$ total cross section.

To determine the top quark mass accurately, calculations of the higher order corrections to Eq.(1) are required. Presently the theoretical prediction for the quarkonium energy spectrum  is known at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). Thus we know the relation between the mass of the toponium 1S state and the top quark pole-mass at $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4M_t)`$. However the series expansion of the toponium mass in $`\alpha _s`$ is not well-defined because there is a large renormalon contribution  in the binding energy $`E_{bin}`$.$`E_{bin}`$ is defined as the energy measured from the twice of the quark pole mass, $`M(1\mathrm{S})=2M_t+E_{bin}`$. Reliable theoretical predictions can be obtained using the short-distance masses. This is because the pole-mass contains the renormalon contribution , which is cancelled  against the renormalon contribution in the binding energy. After taking account of the renormalon cancellation properly the perturbative expansion of the toponium energy spectrum shows healthy convergence. Use of the pole-mass does not respect the renormalon cancellation, therefore we should use one of the short-distance masses to obtain a reliable theoretical prediction for the quarkonium energy spectrum. In this paper we use the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass $`\overline{m}_tm_{t,\overline{\mathrm{MS}}}(m_{t,\overline{\mathrm{MS}}})`$ renormalized at the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass scale.

Taking renormalon cancellation into account our NNLO prediction of the toponium mass, expressed in terms of $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass, has a genuine $`𝒪(\alpha _s^3\overline{m}_t)`$ accuracy which is free from leading renormalon contribution. The renormalon contribution in $`𝒪(\alpha _s^3\overline{m}_t)`$ corrections to the relation between the pole-mass and the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass is cancelled against the leading renormalon contribution in $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$ corrections to the binding energy. Then the remaining $`𝒪(\alpha _s^3\overline{m}_t)`$ correction to the mass relation determines the accuracy of the present perturbative prediction of the toponium mass, which is free from the leading renormalon ambiguity. To achieve the top quark $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass determination with 50 MeV accuracy, the genuine $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$ corrections are required. It is sufficient to calculate further  (i) the relation between $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass and pole-mass at $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$, and (ii) $`𝒪(\alpha _s^5\overline{m}_t)`$ correction to the binding energy in the large-$`\beta _0`$ approximation, which will be sufficient to estimate the leading renormalon contribution. In Ref. we have calculated $`𝒪(\alpha _s^5m)`$ correction to quarkonium 1S spectrum in the large-$`\beta _0`$ approximation. In this paper we discuss the significance of this $`𝒪(\alpha _s^5m)`$ correction to the binding energy in the top quark $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass determination at future lepton colliders.

The outline of this paper is as follows: In Sec.2 the relation between the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass and pole-mass is explained. We show the scale dependence of the pole-mass and examine the higher order corrections to the top quark pole-mass. We demonstrate that the pole-mass is defined only to an accuracy of $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}})`$ due to the renormalon problem. In Sec.3 the renormalon cancellation in the quarkonium energy spectrum is discussed. We explore the convergence property of the perturbative expansion of the toponium 1S mass, and show that we can obtain the reliable perturbative expansion after taking renormalon cancellation into account. Sec.4 contains a summary and discussion of the top quark $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass determination from the measurement of the 1S peak position in $`t\overline{t}`$ total cross section.

## 2 Pole-mass and $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass

In this section we discuss the top quark pole-mass and the renormalon in the pole-mass in some details to understand that we must renounce the top quark pole-mass for our purpose. It is the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass for which we can reduce the theoretical uncertainty below $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}})`$.

The pole-mass of the quark is defined perturbatively as the pole position of the quark propagator. The relation between the pole-mass and $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass is known at three loop , and higher order terms are known in the large-$`\beta _0`$ approximation . Using $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$ and the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-massThe relation between the pole and $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ masses has been calculated in the full theory. We rewrite this relation using $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$ which is the coupling constant in the ”5-flavor” effective theory. the pole-mass of the top quark is written as

$`M_t=\overline{m}_t\left\{1+C_F{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{\pi }}+C_F\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{\pi }}\right)^2d_1+C_F\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{\pi }}\right)^3d_2+C_F\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{\pi }}\right)^4d_3+\mathrm{}\right\},`$ (2)
where $`d_i`$ are the functions of $`\mathrm{log}(\mu /\overline{m}_t)`$, which can be obtained from Refs. and running of $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$. It is known that this perturbative series is divergent due to the renormalon contribution. The pole-mass has strong sensitivity to soft gluon effects, which are the sources of the IR renormalon. The large order behavior of the perturbative expansion of the pole-mass can be estimated in the large-$`\beta _0`$ approximation:

$`d_n{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{\overline{m}_t}}\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{\beta _0}{2}}\right)^nn!,`$ (3)
where $`\beta _0=11(2/3)n_f`$. Thus the perturbative expansion is divergent. The formal argument says that the quark pole-mass up to all orders, Eq.(2), is scale independent. But this statement cannot be justified because the series expansion in $`\alpha _s`$ is not very convergent.

In Fig.1 we show the top quark pole-mass expressed in terms of $`\overline{m}_t`$ up to $`𝒪(\alpha _s^n)(n=1,\mathrm{},4)`$ as a function of the renormalization scale $`\mu `$:

* The scale dependence is large and there is no scale-flat point which satisfies the minimum sensitivity condition against $`\mu `$.§§§ We do not take the scale-flat point of $`𝒪(\alpha _s^2)`$ line at $`\mu 20`$ GeV seriously. Indeed this behavior disappears at $`𝒪(\alpha _s^3)`$. Naively the scale-flat point around $`\mu 𝒪(\overline{m}_t)`$ is expected because the only scale in the problem is $`\overline{m}_t`$. The higher order corrections can not rescue the strong $`\mu `$-dependence of the pole-mass. This is seen more clearly in $`\mu `$-dependence of the pole-mass of the bottom quark, because of large $`\alpha _s`$ in the series expansion of the bottom quark pole-mass.
* The higher order term seems to give $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}})`$ shift. This is consistent with the general argument; the ambiguity due to renormalon contribution is $`\delta M_t𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}})`$ .

The pole-mass has a strong sensitivity to soft gluon effects, which are the sources of the renormalon contribution to the pole-mass. The higher order corrections to the pole-mass are large and the scale dependence is strong. The pole-mass is not well-defined due to the renormalon contribution. In the next section we show that the renormalon contribution in pole-mass is cancelled against the leading renormalon contribution in the binding energy when quarkonium energy spectrum is expressed in terms of the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass.

## 3 1S energy spectrum and renormalon

In this section we study the perturbative expansion of the quarkonium energy spectrum, the convergence property and scale dependence in the pole and $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ mass scheme. We will see that we can obtain the reliable theoretical prediction of $`M(1\mathrm{S})`$ only when renormalon cancellation is properly taken into account. The convergence of the series expansion is nicely improved thanks to renormalon cancellation, furthermore the scale dependence of $`M(1\mathrm{S})`$ is reduced.

To achieve renormalon cancellation, we rewrite the binding energy in terms of $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass using Eq.(2):

$`E_{bin}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{m}_t}{4}}\left(C_F\alpha _s(\mu )\right)^2\left\{1+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{\pi }}e_1+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{\pi }}\right)^2e_2+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{\pi }}\right)^3e_3+\mathrm{}\right\},`$ (4)
where $`e_i`$ are functions of $`\mathrm{log}(\mu /C_F\alpha _s(\mu )\overline{m}_t)`$. The renormalon contribution can be seen in the large order behavior of $`e_i`$. Employing the large-$`\beta _0`$ approximation we obtain

$`e_i{\displaystyle \frac{8}{\pi }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{C_F\alpha _s(\mu )\overline{m}_t}}\right)\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{\beta _0}{2}}\right)^nn!.`$ (5)
In the total energy $`2M_t+E_{bin}`$, the renormalon contribution in $`e_i`$ is cancelled against the renormalon contribution in $`d_i`$($`i=1,2,\mathrm{}`$) from $`2M_t`$. Some comments are in order: To achieve renormalon cancellation at each order of series expansion it is essential to use same coupling $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$ in the series expansion of binding energy $`E_{bin}`$ and in the relation between the pole-mass and the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass. The renormalon cancellations occur between the terms whose order in $`\alpha _s`$ differ by one  in the quarkonium energy spectrum, the origin of extra power of $`\alpha _s`$ is a dynamical scale of the quarkonium system, Bohr radius $`r_B=(C_F\alpha _sM_t)^1`$. This extra power of $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$ is compensated by the $`1/\alpha _s(\mu )`$ in the large order behavior of $`e_i`$.

Now we show our numerical results of $`M(1\mathrm{S})`$:

$`M(1\mathrm{S})`$ $`=`$ $`2\times (174.790.770.350.250.13^{})\mathrm{GeV},(\text{pole-mass scheme})`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`2\times (165.00+7.21+1.24+0.22+0.052^{})\mathrm{GeV},(\overline{\mathrm{MS}}\mathrm{scheme})`$ (7)
where $`M_t=174.79`$ GeV ($`\overline{m}_t=165`$ GeV) and $`\alpha _s^{(5)}(M_Z)=0.119`$ have been used as input parameters in the pole-mass ($`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$) scheme; the terms with stars are evaluated using the large-$`\beta _o`$ approximation. The renormalization scale is taken as $`\mu =r_B^1(\mu =\overline{m}_t)`$ in the pole-mass ($`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$) scheme. The convergence of the perturbative expansion is very slow in the pole-mass scheme, while we see the healthy convergence in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme. In Figs.2 and 3, we show the scale dependence of the perturbative expansion of $`M(1\mathrm{S})`$ in the pole-mass and $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme, respectively:

* Scale dependence is strong in the pole-mass scheme, while the $`\mu `$-dependence is very weak in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme. The scale-flat point appears in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme at a certain $`\mu `$ which lies in the region between $`1/r_B`$ and $`\overline{m}_t`$. This is because we have two large-logs in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme, $`\mathrm{log}(\mu /\overline{m}_t)`$ and $`\mathrm{log}(\mu r_B)`$ A physical interpretation and consequences of this fact are discussed in detail for the bottomonium system in Ref...
* In the pole-mass scheme the higher order terms give large corrections despite of the smallness of the QCD coupling constant, $`\alpha _s0.1`$, while in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme we see the healthy convergence of the perturbative expansion. In the pole-mass scheme the difference between $`𝒪(\alpha _s^n)`$ and $`𝒪(\alpha _s^{n+1})`$ lines is an almost constant shift by $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD})300`$ MeV, which is consistent with the general argument that the ambiguity from the renormalon contribution is $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD})`$ .

## 4 Conclusion and Discussion

We have discussed the relation between the pole-mass and the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass of top quark. The pole-mass always accompanies the renormalon ambiguity of $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}})`$, thus it is not adequate for the precision determination of the top quark mass.

The relation between the top quark $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass and the toponium mass has been investigated at $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$. It is essential to use the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass to obtain a prediction more accurately than the leading renormalon ambiguity of $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}})`$. Our theoretical prediction is given at $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$ using the large-$`\beta _0`$ approximation for $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$ term. To achieve our goal  ultimately, the 4-loop relation between pole and $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ masses should be calculated.

Finally let us give a discussion on the uncertainty in the relation between $`\overline{m}_t`$ and $`M(1\mathrm{S})`$ given in Eq.(7). The last term in the series expansion of $`M(1\mathrm{S})`$ in Eq.(7) is 52 MeV, from which we expect that the uncertainty in the top quark $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$-mass determination is below 50 MeV. This is supported from the scale dependence of mass of toponium 1S state up to $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$ in Fig.3. The last term of $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$ correction in the large-$`\beta _0`$ approximation would be a reasonable estimate of the exact $`𝒪(\alpha _s^4\overline{m}_t)`$ term.

Acknowledgment: Y. K. is grateful to fruitful discussion with Y. Sumino. Y.K. was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.