Evidence for Bosonic Electroweak Corrections in the Standard Model

We present strong indirect evidence for the contribution of bosonic electroweak corrections in the Standard Model. Although important conceptually, these corrections give subleading contributions in current high energy experiments, and it was previously thought that they are difficult to detect. We also discuss the separate contribution of the Higgs boson.Comment: 9 pages (LaTeX + 3 PS figures, needs psfig

An improved calculation of the isospin-symmetry-breaking corrections to superallowed Fermi beta decay

We report new shell-model calculations of the isospin-symmetry-breaking correction to superallowed nuclear beta decay. The most important improvement is the inclusion of core orbitals, which are demonstrated to have a significant impact on the mismatch in the radial wave functions of the parent and daughter states. We determine which core orbitals are important to include from an examination of measured spectroscopic factors in single-nucleon pick-up reactions. We also examine the new radiative-correction calculation by Marciano and Sirlin and, by a simple reorganization, show that it is possible to preserve the conventional separation into a nucleus-independent inner radiative term and a nucleus-dependent outer term. We tabulate new values for the three theoretical corrections for twenty superallowed transitions, including the thirteen well-studied cases. With these new correction terms the corrected Ft values for the thirteen cases are statistically consistent with one another and the anomalousness of the 46V result disappears. These new calculations lead to a lower average Ft value and a higher value of Vud. The sum of squares of the top-row elements of the CKM matrix now agrees exactly with unitarity.Comment: 15 pages, 2 postscript figures, revtex

Width and Partial Widths of Unstable Particles in the Light of the Nielsen Identities

Fundamental properties of unstable particles, including mass, width, and partial widths, are examined on the basis of the Nielsen identities (NI) that describe the gauge dependence of Green functions. In particular, we prove that the pole residues and associated definitions of branching ratios and partial widths are gauge independent to all orders. A simpler, previously discussed definition of branching ratios and partial widths is found to be gauge independent through next-to-next-to-leading order. It is then explained how it may be modified in order to extend the gauge independence to all orders. We also show that the physical scattering amplitude is the most general combination of self-energy, vertex, and box contributions that is gauge independent for arbitrary s, discuss the analytical properties of the NI functions, and exhibit explicitly their one-loop expressions in the Z-gamma sector of the Standard Model.Comment: 20 pages (Latex); minor changes included, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

New Optimization Methods for Converging Perturbative Series with a Field Cutoff

We take advantage of the fact that in lambda phi ^4 problems a large field cutoff phi_max makes perturbative series converge toward values exponentially close to the exact values, to make optimal choices of phi_max. For perturbative series terminated at even order, it is in principle possible to adjust phi_max in order to obtain the exact result. For perturbative series terminated at odd order, the error can only be minimized. It is however possible to introduce a mass shift in order to obtain the exact result. We discuss weak and strong coupling methods to determine the unknown parameters. The numerical calculations in this article have been performed with a simple integral with one variable. We give arguments indicating that the qualitative features observed should extend to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. We found that optimization at even order is more efficient that at odd order. We compare our methods with the linear delta-expansion (LDE) (combined with the principle of minimal sensitivity) which provides an upper envelope of for the accuracy curves of various Pade and Pade-Borel approximants. Our optimization method performs better than the LDE at strong and intermediate coupling, but not at weak coupling where it appears less robust and subject to further improvements. We also show that it is possible to fix the arbitrary parameter appearing in the LDE using the strong coupling expansion, in order to get accuracies comparable to ours.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figures, uses revtex; minor typos corrected, refs. adde

Remarks on the Upper Bounds on the Higgs Boson Mass from Triviality

We study the effects of the one-loop matching conditions on Higgs boson and top quark masses on the triviality bounds on the Higgs boson mass using $\beta_{\lambda}$ with corrected two-loop coefficients. We obtain quite higher results than previous ones and observe that the triviality bounds are not nearly influenced by varying top quark mass over the range measured at CDF and D0. The effects of typo errors in $\beta_{\lambda}^{(2)}$ and the one-loop matching condition on the top quark mass are negligible. We estimate the size of effects on the triviality bounds from the one-loop matching condition on the Higgs boson mass.Comment: 9 pages, tar'ed gzip'ed uuencoded files, LaTex, 5 PostScript figures. To appear in Physical Review

Calculated corrections to superallowed Fermi beta decay: New evaluation of the nuclear-structure-dependent terms

The measured $ft$-values for superallowed $0^{+} \to 0^{+}$ nuclear $\beta$-decay can be used to obtain the value of the vector coupling constant and thus to test the unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. An essential requirement for this test is accurate calculations for the radiative and isospin symmetry-breaking corrections that must be applied to the experimental data. We present a new and consistent set of calculations for the nuclear-structure-dependent components of these corrections. These new results do not alter the current status of the unitarity test -- it still fails by more than two standard deviations -- but they provide calculated corrections for eleven new superallowed transitions that are likely to become accessible to precise measurements in the future. The reliability of all calculated corrections is explored and an experimental method indicated by which the structure-dependent corrections can be tested and, if necessary, improved.Comment: Revtex4, one figur

Final-State-Interaction Simulation of T-Violation in the Top-Quark Semileptonic Decay

The standard electroweak final-state interaction induces a false T-odd correlation in the top-quark semileptonic decay. The correlation parameter is calculated in the standard model and found to be considerably larger than those that could be produced by genuine T-violation effects in a large class of theoretical models.Comment: 14 pages, 1 diagram (not included

Large-basis shell-model calculation of 10C->10B Fermi matrix element

We use a $4\hbar\Omega$ shell-model calculation with a two-body effective interaction derived microscopically from the Reid93 potential to calculate the isospin-mixing correction for the 10C->10B superallowed Fermi transition. The effective interaction takes into account the Coulomb potential as well as the charge dependence of T=1 partial waves. Our results suggest the isospin- mixing correction $\delta_{C}\approx 0.1$, which is compatible with previous calculations. The correction obtained in those calculations, performed in a $0\hbar\Omega$ space, was dominated by deviation from unity of the radial overlap between the converted proton and the corresponding neutron. In the present calculation this effect is accommodated by the large model space. The obtained $\delta_{C}$ correction is about a factor of four too small to obtain unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix with the present experimental data.Comment: 14 pages. REVTEX. 3 PostScript figure

Top Radiative Corrections in Non-minimal Standard Models

We derive the one-loop effective action induced by a heavy top in models with an extended Higgs sector. We use the effective action to analyze the top corrections to the $\rho$ parameter and to the Higgs-gauge boson couplings. We show that in models with $\rho\not=1$ at tree-level, one does not lose generally the bound on $m_t$ from the $\rho$ parameter.Comment: 9 pages, phyzzx file, UPR-0603T. (a new reference has been added

CP violation through particle mixing and the H-A lineshape

We consider the possibility of looking for CP-mixing effects in two-Higgs doublet models (and particularly in the MSSM) by studying the lineshape of the CP-even (H) and CP-odd (A) neutral scalars. In most cases H and A come quite degenerate in mass, and their s-channel production would lead to nearly overlapping resonances. CP-violating effects may connect these two Higgs bosons, giving origin to one-loop particle mixing, which, due to their mass proximity, can be resonantly enhanced. The corresponding transition amplitude contains then CP-even and CP-odd components; besides the signal of intereference between both amplitudes, leading to a CP-odd asymmetry, we propose to look for the mixing probability itself, a quantity which, although CP-even, can originate only from a CP-odd amplitude. We show that, in general, the effect of such a mixing probability cannot be mimicked by (or be re-absorbed into) a simple redefinition of the H and A masses in the context of a CP-conserving model. Specifically, the effects of the CP-mixing are such that, either the mass-splitting of the H and A bosons cannot be accounted for in the absence of CP-mixing, and/or the detailed energy dependence of the produced lineshape is clearly different from the one obtained by redefining the masses, but not allowing any mixing. This analysis suggests that the detailed study of the lineshape of this Higgs system may provide valuable information on the CP nature of the underlying theory.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures; v2: added one reference; v3: radiative corrections taken into account, agreement now with CP-SuperH, conclusions unchanged. v3 matches the paper version accepted for publication in JHE