Measurement of the left-right charge asymmetry in hadronicc Z decays and Ae determination

We present a new method for determining the electron left-right asymmetry factor, Ae, by measuring the forward-backward charge flow in samples of hadronic Z events, produced in e+e- collisions, with left-handed and right-handed electron-beam polarizations. The raw, left-right charge asymmetry, QLRraw, is defined. After correction by the measured beam polarization, it provides Ae with greatly reduced dependence on Monte Carlo corrections for acceptances and jet charge measurement. The QLRraw is also combined with the raw, left-right cross section asymmetry, ALRraw, to obtain Ae without the use of the measured electron-beam polarization, and with half the statistical error as that obtained for Ae using the polarization corrected QLRraw alone. This method gives sin2 θWeff = 0.2291 ± 0.0039(stat.) ± 0.0012(syst.). The measurement was performed at a center-of-mass energy of 91.26 GeV with the SLD detector at the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC)