A measurement of the tau Michel parameters at SLD

This thesis presents a measurement of the tau Michel parameters. This measurement utilizes the highly polarized SLC electron beam to extract these quantities directly from the measured tau decay spectra using the 1993--95 SLD sample of 4,528 tau pair events. The results are {rho}{sup e} = 0.71 {+-} 0.14 {+-} 0.05, {xi}{sup e} = 1.16 {+-} 0.52 {+-} 0.06, and ({xi}{delta}){sup e} = 0.85 {+-} 0.43 {+-} 0.08 for tau decays to electrons and {rho}{sup {mu}} = 0.54 {+-} 0.28 {sup {minus}} 0.14, {eta}{sup {mu}} = {minus}0.59 {+-} 0.82 {+-} 0.45, {xi}{sup {mu}} = 0.75 {+-} 0.50 {+-} 0.14, and ({xi}{delta}){sup {mu}} = 0.82 {+-} 0.32 {+-} 0.07 for tau decays to muons. Combining all leptonic tau decays gives {rho} = 0.72 {+-} 0.09 {+-} 0.03, {xi} = 1.05 {+-} 0.35 {+-} 0.04, and {Xi}{delta} = 0.88 {+-} 0.27 {+-} 0.04. These results agree well with the current world average and the Standard Model.