Properties of hadronic events in e+e- annihilation at √s = 91 GeV

We report on properties of hadronic events form e+e- annihilation observed by the ALEPH detector at the large Electron Positron Collider at CERN. The center-of-mass energy was √s = 91.0-91.3 GeV. Measured distributions of the global event-shape variables sphericity, aplanarity, thrust and minor value, and of the inclusive variables xp, pperpendiculartoin, pperpendiculartoout and γ are presented. We measure a mean charged multiplicity in hadronic events of = 21.3 ± 0.1 (statistical) ± 0.6 (systematic). The data are in good agreement with QCD-based models which use the leading-logarithm approximation, and are less well described by a model using O(αs2) QCD. (orig.)