A precise measurement of the left-right asymmetry of Z Boson production at the SLAC linear collider

We present a precise measurement of the left-right cross section asymmetry of Z boson production (A{sub LR}) observed in 1993 data at the SLAC linear collider. The A{sub LR} experiment provides a direct measure of the effective weak mixing angle through the initial state couplings of the electron to the Z. During the 1993 run of the SLC, the SLD detector recorded 49,392 Z events produced by the collision of longitudinally polarized electrons on unpolarized positrons at a center-of-mass energy of 91.26 GeV. A Compton polarimeter measured the luminosity-weighted electron polarization to be (63.4{+-}1.3)%. ALR was measured to be 0.1617{+-}0.0071(stat.){+-}0.0033(syst.), which determines the effective weak mixing angle to be sin {sup 2}{theta}{sub W}{sup eff} = 0.2292{+-}0.0009(stat.){+-}0.0004(syst.). This measurement of A{sub LR} is incompatible at the level of two standard deviations with the value predicted by a fit of several other electroweak measurements to the Standard Model