Measurement of αs(MZ2) from hadronic event observables at the Z0 resonance

The strong coupling αs(MZ2) has been measured using hadronic decays of Z0 bosons collected by the SLD experiment at SLAC. The data were compared with QCD predictions both at fixed order O(αs2) and including resummed analytic formulas based on the next-to-leading logarithm approximation. In this comprehensive analysis we studied event shapes, jet rates, particle correlations, and angular energy flow, and checked the consistency between αs(MZ2) values extracted from these different measures. Combining all results we obtain αs(MZ2)= 0.1200±0.0025 (expt) ±0.0078 (theor), where the dominant uncertainty is from uncalculated higher order contributions.