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Published: 2001

Total Pages: 5

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We present preliminary results of a new measurement of the inclusive b quark fragmentation function in Z° decays using a novel kinematic B hadron energy reconstruction technique. The measurement is performed using 350,000 hadronic Z° events recorded in the SLD experiment at SLAC between 1997 and 1998. The small and stable SLC beam spot and the CCD-based vertex detector are used to reconstruct topological B-decay vertices with high efficiency and purity, and to provide precise measurements of the kinematic quantities used in this technique. We measure the B energy with good efficiency and resolution over the full kinematic range. We compare the measured scaled B hadron energy distribution with several functional forms of the B hadron energy distribution and predictions of several models of b quark fragmentation. Several functions are excluded by the data. The average scaled energy of the weakly decaying B hadron is measured to be x{sub B} = 0.710 " 0.003 (stat) " 0.005 (syst) " 0.004 (model) (preliminary). In addition, we reconstruct the decay vertices of both the leading B and hadrons in a large sample of events, and measure their energies. We present the first (preliminary) measurement of the correlation between the B and energies in Z° --> b{bar b} events, and compare with the leading order QCD prediction.