Measurement of the Strong Coupling Constant alpha_S from the Four-Jet Rate in e+e- Annihilation using JADE data

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.