Energy-energy correlations in hadronic final states from Z0 decays

We have studied the energy-energy angular correlations in hadronic final states from Z0 decay using the DELPHI detector at LEP. From a comparison with Monte Carlo calculations based on the exact second order QCD matrix element and string fragmentation we find that Λ(5)/MS = 104-20 +25 (stat.)-20 +25(syst.)-00 +30(theor.) MeV, which corresponds to αs(91 GeV) = 0.106± 0.003 (stat.)±0.003(syst.)-0.000 +0.003(theor.). The theoretical error stems from different choices for the renormalization scale of αs. In the Monte Carlo simulation the scale of αs as well as the fragmentation parameters have been optimized to described reasonably well all aspects of multihadron production.