A measurement of the forward-backward charge asymmetry in hadronic decays of the Z0

We present a measurement of the forward-backward charge asymmetry in hadronic decays of the Z0 using data collected with the OPAL detector at LEP. The forward-backward charge asymmetry was measured using a weight function method which gave the number of forward events on a statistical basis. In a data sample of 448 942 hadronic Z0 decays, we have observed a charge asymmetry of Ah = 0.040±0.004 (stat.)±0.006 (syst.)±0.002 (B0B0mix.), taking into account the effect of B0B0 mixing. In the framework of the standard model, this asymmetry corresponds to an effective weak mixing angle averaged over five quark flavours of sin2θW = 0.2321 ± 0.0017 (stat.) ± 0.0027 (syst.) ± 0.0009 (B0B0mix.). The result agrees with the value obtained from the Z0 line shape and lepton pair forward-backward asymmetry.