Improved measurement of theB⁰ andB⁺ meson lifetimes

The lifetimes of theB 0 andB + mesons have been measured with theAleph detector at LEP, using approximately 3 million hadronic Z decays collected in the period 1991–1994. In the first of three methods, semileptonic decays ofB 0 andB + mesons were partially reconstructed by identifying events containing a lepton with an associatedD*− or$$\bar D^0 $$ meson. The second method used fully reconstructedB 0 andB + mesons. The third method, used to measure theB 0 lifetime, employed a partial reconstruction technique to identifyB 0→D*− π + X decays. The combined results are $$\begin{gathered} \tau _0 = 1.55 \pm 0.06 \pm 0.03 ps, \hfill \\ \tau _ + = 1.58 \pm 0.09 \pm 0.03 ps, \hfill \\ \tfrac{{\tau _ + }}{{\tau _0 }} = 1.03 \pm 0.08 \pm 0.02. \hfill \\ \end{gathered} $$ .