Averaging lifetimes for B hadron species

The measurement of the lifetimes of the individual B species are of great interest. Many of these measurements are well below the 10% level of precision. However, in order to reach the precision necessary to test the current theoretical predictions, the results from different experiments need to be averaged together. Therefore, the relevant systematic uncertainties of each measurement need to be well defined in order to understand the correlations between the results from different experiments. In this paper we discuss the dominant sources of systematic errors which lead to correlations between the different measurements. We point out problems connected with the conventional approach of combining lifetime data and discuss methods which overcome these problems. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RR 2916(96-04) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman