Measurement of the B hadron lifetime

The average lifetime of B hadrons has been measured by the ALEPH experiment at LEP. Events containing B hadrons are selected by the identification of leptons with high transverse momentum in hadronic Z decays, and the lifetime is extracted from a fit to the impact parameter distribution of the lepton tracks. From a sample of 1.7×105 hadronic Z decays a lifetime of 1.29±0.06±0.10 ps is measured.