The inclusive charm production rate in W decays is measured from a study of the properties of final state particles. The sample of W pairs is selected from 67.7 pb −1 collected by ALEPH in 1996 and 1997 at centre-of-mass energies near 172 and 183 GeV in the channels W + W − →4q and W + W − →ℓνq q ̄ . The branching fraction of hadronic W decays to a final state containing a c quark, R W c = Γ(W→cX)/Γ(W→hadrons), is measured to be 0.51±0.05 stat ±0.03 syst . This allows a direct determination of the CKM matrix element |V cs |=1.00±0.11 stat ±0.07 syst .
VCS is the CKM matrix element.
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