Improved measurement of theB0 andB+ meson lifetimes

The lifetimes of theB ⁰ andB ⁺ mesons have been measured with theAleph detector at LEP, using approximately 3 million hadronic Z decays collected in the period 1991–1994. In the first of three methods, semileptonic decays ofB ⁰ andB ⁺ mesons were partially reconstructed by identifying events containing a lepton with an associatedD*⁻ or meson. The second method used fully reconstructedB ⁰ andB ⁺ mesons. The third method, used to measure theB ⁰ lifetime, employed a partial reconstruction technique to identifyB ⁰→D*⁻ π ⁺ X decays.