Measurement of the Probability for Gluon Splitting into b{bar b} in Z{sup 0} Decays

We present a preliminary measurement of the rate of gluon splitting into bottom quarks, g {r_arrow} b{bar b}, in hadronic Z{sup 0} decays collected by SLD between 1996 and 1998. The analysis was performed by looking for secondary bottom production in 4-jet events of any primary flavor. 4-jet events were identified, and a topological vertex-mass technique was applied to each jet in order to identify b or {bar b} jets. The upgraded CCD based vertex detector gives very high B-tagging efficiency, especially for B hadrons of the low energies typical of this process. The two most nearly collinear b/{bar b} jets were tagged as originating from g {r_arrow} b{bar b}. We measured the rate of secondary b/{bar b} production per hadronic event, g{sub b{bar b}}, to be (3.07 {+-} 0.71(stat.) {+-} 0.66(syst.)) x 10{sup {minus}3} (preliminary).