Measurement of the Average B Hadron Lifetime in Z0 Decays Using Reconstructed Vertices

We report a measurement of the average B hadron lifetime using data collected with the SLD detector at the SLAC Linear Collider in 1993. An inclusive analysis selected three-dimensional vertices with B hadron lifetime information in a sample of 50 × 103 Z0 decays. A lifetime of 1.564 ± 0.030(stat) ± 0.036(syst) ps was extracted from the decay length distribution of these vertices using a binned maximum likelihood method.