The current status of measurements of the strong coupling constant from different reactions is reviewed. Including new results presented at the 1996 ICHEP conference, a global average alpha_s(Mz) = 0.118 +- 0.003 is obtained.
The strong coupling constant is one of the fundamental parameters of the standard model of particle physics. In this review I will briefly summarise the theoretical framework, within which the strong coupling constant is defined and how it is connected to measurable observables. Then I will give an historical overview of its experimental determinations and discuss the current status and world average value. Among the many different techniques used to determine this coupling constant in the context of quantum chromodynamics, I will focus in particular on a number of measurements carried out at the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
Multi-hadronic events produced in e+e- collisions provide an excellent laboratory to study QCD, the theory of strong interactions, and in particular to determine the strong coupling parameter alpha_s and demonstrate its predicted behavior as a function of the energy scale. Determinations of alpha_s at LEP will be reviewed with emphasis on event shape variables and jet rates in 3-jet and 4-jet events.
We present results showing that the strong coupling constant measured in two-flavor full QCD with dynamical Kogut-Susskind quarks at $beta=5.7$ exhibit a 15% increase due to sea quarks over that for quenched QCD at the scale $muapprox 7$GeV . (talk at lattice93)
We review the long term project of the ALPHA collaboration to compute in QCD the running coupling constant and quark masses at high energy scales in terms of low energy hadronic quantities. The adapted techniques required to numerically carry out the required multiscale non-perturbative calculation with our special emphasis on the control of systematic errors are summarized. The complete results in the two dynamical flavor approximation are reviewed and an outlook is given on the ongoing three flavor extension of the programme with improved target precision.
Data from e+e- annihilation into hadrons collected by the JADE experiment at centre-of-mass energies between 14 GeV and 44 GeV were used to study the four-jet rate as a function of the Durham algorithms resolution parameter y_cut. The four-jet rate was compared to a QCD NLO order calculations including NLLA resummation of large logarithms. The strong coupling constant measured from the four-jet rate is alpha_S(M_Z) = 0.1169 +/- 0.0004 (stat) +/- 0.0012 (expt) +/- 0.0021 (had) +/- 0.0007 (theo), alpha_S(M_Z) = 0.1169 +/- 0.0026 (total error) in agreement with the world average.