Strange Quark Mass Dependence of the Tau Hadronic Width

Abstract

The perturbative quark mass corrections to the tau hadronic width are studied to O(alpha_s^3 m_q^2). Including up to dimension four corrections, we get m_s(4 GeV^2)=(143 \pm 42) MeV [m_s(1 GeV^2)=(193 \pm 59) MeV ]. Possible improvements to reduce the theoretical uncertainty are pointed out.

Comments: Invited talk at High Energy Conference on Quantum Chromodynamics QCD'98, 2-8 July 1998, Montpellier (France). LaTeX, 8 pages with 3 ps figures