Test of the flavour independence of αs

Abstract Using about 950000 hadronic events collected during 1991 and 1992 with the ALEPH detector, the ratios r b = α s b α s udsc and r uds = α s uds α s cb have been measured in order to test the flavour independence of the strong coupling constant α s . The analysis is based on event-shape variables using the full hadronic sample, two b -quark samples enriched by lepton tagging and lifetime tagging, and a light-quark sample enriched by lifetime antitagging. The combined results are r b = 1.002±0.023 and r uds = 0.971 ± 0.023.