A flavour independent search for the Higgsstrahlung process in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies from 189 to 209 GeV

Higgs boson decays to b or tau pairs, dominant in the standard model, can be suppressed in extended models. A flavour-independent search for the Higgsstrahlung process has been carried out to treat all possible hadronic decays of the Higgs boson on an equal footing. The analysis is based on the data collected by the ALEPH detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies from 189 to 209 GeV. A 95\% CL lower mass limit of is obtained for a cross-section equal to that of the standard model and a 100\% hadronic branching fraction.