Three-Loop Anomalous Dimension of the Heavy Quark Pair Production Current in Non-Relativistic QCD

The three-loop non-mixing contributions to the anomalous dimension of the leading order quark pair production current in non-relativistic QCD are computed. It is demonstrated that the renormalization procedure can only be carried out consistently if the dynamics of both soft and the ultrasoft degrees of freedom is present for all scales below the heavy quark mass, and if the soft and ultrasoft renormalization scales are always correlated.Comment: 19 pages, revtex, 5 postscript figures include

Ultrasoft NLL Running of the Nonrelativistic O(v) QCD Quark Potential

Using the nonrelativistic effective field theory vNRQCD, we determine the contribution to the next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) running of the effective quark-antiquark potential at order v (1/mk) from diagrams with one potential and two ultrasoft loops, v being the velocity of the quarks in the c.m. frame. The results are numerically important and complete the description of ultrasoft next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) order effects in heavy quark pair production and annihilation close to threshold.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables; minor modifications, typos corrected, references added, footnote adde

Ultrasoft Renormalization in Non-Relativistic QCD

For Non-Relativistic QCD the velocity renormalization group correlates the renormalization scales for ultrasoft, potential and soft degrees of freedom. Here we discuss the renormalization of operators by ultrasoft gluons. We show that renormalization of soft vertices can induce new operators, and also present a procedure for correctly subtracting divergences in mixed potential-ultrasoft graphs. Our results affect the running of the spin-independent potentials in QCD. The change for the NNLL t-tbar cross section near threshold is very small, being at the 1% level and essentially independent of the energy. We also discuss implications for analyzing situations where mv^2 ~ Lambda_QCD.Comment: 31 pages, 11 fig

Electroweak Absorptive Parts in NRQCD Matching Conditions

Electroweak corrections associated with the instability of the top quark to the next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) total top pair threshold cross section in e+e- annihilation are determined. Our method is based on absorptive parts in electroweak matching conditions of the NRQCD operators and the optical theorem. The corrections lead to ultraviolet phase space divergences that have to be renormalized and lead to NLL mixing effects. Numerically, the corrections can amount to several percent and are comparable to the known NNLL QCD corrections.Comment: 17 pages, revtex4, 4 postscript figures included; minor changes in text and references, title modified in printed versio

1S and MSbar Bottom Quark Masses from Upsilon Sum Rules

The bottom quark 1S mass, $M_b^{1S}$, is determined using sum rules which relate the masses and the electronic decay widths of the $\Upsilon$ mesons to moments of the vacuum polarization function. The 1S mass is defined as half the perturbative mass of a fictitious ${}^3S_1$ bottom-antibottom quark bound state, and is free of the ambiguity of order $\Lambda_{QCD}$ which plagues the pole mass definition. Compared to an earlier analysis by the same author, which had been carried out in the pole mass scheme, the 1S mass scheme leads to a much better behaved perturbative series of the moments, smaller uncertainties in the mass extraction and to a reduced correlation of the mass and the strong coupling. We arrive at $M_b^{1S}=4.71\pm 0.03$ GeV taking $\alpha_s(M_Z)=0.118\pm 0.004$ as an input. From that we determine the $\bar{MS}$ mass as $\bar m_b(\bar m_b) = 4.20 \pm 0.06$ GeV. The error in $\bar m_b(\bar m_b)$ can be reduced if the three-loop corrections to the relation of pole and $\bar{MS}$ mass are known and if the error in the strong coupling is decreased.Comment: 20 pages, latex; numbers in Tabs. 2,3,4 corrected, a reference and a comment on the fitting procedure added, typos in Eqs. 2 and 23 eliminate

Phase Space Matching and Finite Lifetime Effects for Top-Pair Production Close to Threshold

The top-pair $t\bar t$ production cross section close to threshold in $e^+e^-$ collisions is strongly affected by the small lifetime of the top quark. Since the cross section is defined through final states containing the top decay products, a consistent definition of the cross section depends on prescriptions how these final states are accounted for the cross section. Experimentally, these prescriptions are implemented for example through cuts on kinematic quantities such as the reconstructed top quark invariant masses. As long as these cuts do not reject final states that can arise from the decay of a top and an anti-top quark with a small off-shellness compatible with the nonrelativistic power-counting, they can be implemented through imaginary phase space matching conditions in NRQCD. The prescription-dependent cross section can then be determined from the optical theorem using the $e^+e^-$ forward scattering amplitude. We compute the phase space matching conditions associated to cuts on the top and anti-top invariant masses at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) order and partially at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (N${}^3$LL) order in the nonrelativistic expansion and, together with finite lifetime and electroweak effects known from previous work, analyze their numerical impact on the $t\bar t$ cross section. We show that the phase space matching contributions are essential to make reliable NRQCD predictions, particularly for energies below the peak region, where the cross section is small. We find that irreducible background contributions associated to final states that do not come from top decays are strongly suppressed and can be neglected for the theoretical predictions.Comment: 62 pages, 21 figure

Improved Perturbative QCD Approach to the Bottomonium Spectrum

Recently it has been shown that the gross structure of the bottomonium spectrum is reproduced reasonably well within the non-relativistic boundstate theory based on perturbative QCD. In that calculation, however, the fine splittings and the S-P level splittings are predicted to be considerably narrower than the corresponding experimental values. We investigate the bottomonium spectrum within a specific framework based on perturbative QCD, which incorporates all the corrections up to O(alpha_S^5 m_b) and O(alpha_S^4 m_b), respectively, in the computations of the fine splittings and the S-P splittings. We find that the agreement with the experimental data for the fine splittings improves drastically due to an enhancement of the wave functions close to the origin as compared to the Coulomb wave functions. The agreement of the S-P splittings with the experimental data also becomes better. We find that natural scales of the fine splittings and the S-P splittings are larger than those of the boundstates themselves. On the other hand, the predictions of the level spacings between consecutive principal quantum numbers depend rather strongly on the scale mu of the operator \propto C_A/(m_b r^2). The agreement of the whole spectrum with the experimental data is much better than the previous predictions when mu \simeq 3-4 GeV for alpha_S(M_Z)=0.1181. There seems to be a phenomenological preference for some suppression mechanism for the above operator.Comment: 26 pages, 16 figures. Minor changes, to be published in PR

Top Quark Pair Production close to Threshold: Top Mass, Width and Momentum Distribution

The complete NNLO QCD corrections to the total cross section $\sigma(e^+e^- \to Z*,\gamma*\to t\bar t)$ in the kinematic region close to the top-antitop threshold are calculated by solving the corresponding Schroedinger equations exactly in momentum space in a consistent momentum cutoff regularization scheme. The corrections coming from the same NNLO QCD effects to the top quark three-momentum distribution $d\sigma/d |\vec k_t|$ are determined. We discuss the origin of the large NNLO corrections to the peak position and the normalization of the total cross section observed in previous works and propose a new top mass definition, the 1S mass M_1S, which stabilizes the peak in the total cross section. If the influence of beamstrahlung and initial state radiation on the mass determination is small, a theoretical uncertainty on the 1S top mass measurement of 200 MeV from the total cross section at the linear collider seems possible. We discuss how well the 1S mass can be related to the $\bar{MS}$ mass. We propose a consistent way to implement the top quark width at NNLO by including electroweak effects into the NRQCD matching coefficients, which then can become complex.Comment: 53 pages, latex; minor changes, a number of typos correcte

On Electroweak Matching Conditions for Top Pair Production at Threshold

We determine the real parts of electroweak matching conditions relevant for top quark pair production close to threshold in e+e- annihilation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) order. Numerically the corrections are comparable to the NNLL QCD corrections.Comment: 12 pages, revtex4, 1 postscript figure included; minor changes in text and references, version published in Phys. Rev.

Recent Progress in Heavy Quark Physics

Some of the recent progress in heavy quark physics is reviewed. Special attention is paid to inclusive methods for determining Vub and factorization in nonleptonic B decays. Theoretical predictions for top-antitop production near threshold are also discussed.Comment: talk given at 2001 Lepton Photon Meeting, 10 pages, 5 figure