91 research outputs found
The QCD Coupling Constant
This paper presents a summary of the current status of determinations of the
strong coupling constant alpha_s. A detailed description of the definition,
scale dependence and inherent theoretical ambiguities is given. The various
physical processes that can be used to determine alpha_s are reviewed and
attention is given to the uncertainties, both theoretical and experimental.Comment: 56 page
Thermal right-handed neutrino production rate in the non-relativistic regime
We consider the next-to-leading order thermal production rate of heavy
right-handed neutrinos in the non-relativistic regime m_top < pi*T << M, where
m_top refers to the electroweak scale. Rephrasing the problem in an OPE
language and making use of different techniques than a previous analysis by
Salvio et al, we confirm the general structure of their result and many of the
coefficients. We also extend the analysis to the next order in the
non-relativistic expansion, thereby revealing the leading non-trivial momentum
dependence, as well as to NNLO in couplings, revealing the leading sensitivity
to thermal resummations. Our results are expressed as a sum of simple "master"
structures, which renders them a suitable starting point for determining the
next-to-leading order rate also in the relativistic regime pi*T ~ M.Comment: 26 pages. v2: note added, published versio
Simultaneous decoupling of bottom and charm quarks
We compute the decoupling relations for the strong coupling, the light quark
masses, the gauge-fixing parameter, and the light fields in QCD with heavy
charm and bottom quarks to three-loop accuracy taking into account the exact
dependence on . The application of a low-energy theorem allows the
extraction of the three-loop effective Higgs-gluon coupling valid for
extensions of the Standard Model with additional heavy quarks from the
decoupling constant of .Comment: 30 page
Notes on Operator Equations of Supercurrent Multiplets and the Anomaly Puzzle in Supersymmetric Field Theories
Recently, Komargodski and Seiberg have proposed a new type of supercurrent
multiplet which contains the energy-momentum tensor and the supersymmetry
current consistently. In this paper we study quantum properties of the
supercurrent in renormalizable field theories. We point out that the new
supercurrent gives a quite simple resolution to the classic problem, called the
anomaly puzzle, that the Adler-Bardeen theorem applied to an R-symmetry current
is inconsistent with all order corrections to functions. We propose an
operator equation for the supercurrent in all orders of perturbation theory,
and then perform several consistency checks of the equation. The operator
equation we propose is consisitent with the one proposed by Shifman and
Vainshtein, if we take some care in interpreting the meaning of non-conserved
currents.Comment: 28 pages; v2:clarifications and references added, some minor change
Production of scalar and pseudo-scalar Higgs bosons to next-to-next-to-leading order at hadron colliders
We consider the production of intermediate-mass CP-even and CP-odd Higgs
bosons in proton-proton and proton-anti-proton collisions. We extend the
recently published results for the complete next-to-next-to-leading order
calculation for a scalar Higgs boson to the pseudo-scalar case and present
details of the calculation that might be useful for similar future
investigations. The result is based on an expansion in the limit of a heavy top
quark mass and a subsequent matching to the expression obtained in the limit of
infinite energy. For a Higgs boson mass of 120 GeV the deviation from the
infinite-top quark mass result is small. For 300 GeV, however, the
next-to-next-to-leading order corrections for a scalar Higgs boson exceed the
effective-theory result by about 9% which increases to 22% in the pseudo-scalar
case. Thus in this mass range the effect on the total cross section amounts to
about 2% and 6%, respectively, which may be relevant in future precision
studies.Comment: 29 page
The Quark Beam Function at NNLL
In hard collisions at a hadron collider the most appropriate description of
the initial state depends on what is measured in the final state. Parton
distribution functions (PDFs) evolved to the hard collision scale Q are
appropriate for inclusive observables, but not for measurements with a specific
number of hard jets, leptons, and photons. Here the incoming protons are probed
and lose their identity to an incoming jet at a scale \mu_B << Q, and the
initial state is described by universal beam functions. We discuss the
field-theoretic treatment of beam functions, and show that the beam function
has the same RG evolution as the jet function to all orders in perturbation
theory. In contrast to PDF evolution, the beam function evolution does not mix
quarks and gluons and changes the virtuality of the colliding parton at fixed
momentum fraction. At \mu_B, the incoming jet can be described perturbatively,
and we give a detailed derivation of the one-loop matching of the quark beam
function onto quark and gluon PDFs. We compute the associated NLO Wilson
coefficients and explicitly verify the cancellation of IR singularities. As an
application, we give an expression for the next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic
order (NNLL) resummed Drell-Yan beam thrust cross section.Comment: 54 pages, 9 figures; v2: notation simplified in a few places, typos
fixed; v3: journal versio
Parton Fragmentation within an Identified Jet at NNLL
The fragmentation of a light parton i to a jet containing a light energetic
hadron h, where the momentum fraction of this hadron as well as the invariant
mass of the jet is measured, is described by "fragmenting jet functions". We
calculate the one-loop matching coefficients J_{ij} that relate the fragmenting
jet functions G_i^h to the standard, unpolarized fragmentation functions D_j^h
for quark and gluon jets. We perform this calculation using various IR
regulators and show explicitly how the IR divergences cancel in the matching.
We derive the relationship between the coefficients J_{ij} and the quark and
gluon jet functions. This provides a cross-check of our results. As an
application we study the process e+ e- to X pi+ on the Upsilon(4S) resonance
where we measure the momentum fraction of the pi+ and restrict to the dijet
limit by imposing a cut on thrust T. In our analysis we sum the logarithms of
tau=1-T in the cross section to next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy
(NNLL). We find that including contributions up to NNLL (or NLO) can have a
large impact on extracting fragmentation functions from e+ e- to dijet + h.Comment: expanded introduction, typos fixed, journal versio
Wilson Expansion of QCD Propagators at Three Loops: Operators of Dimension Two and Three
In this paper we construct the Wilson short distance operator product
expansion for the gluon, quark and ghost propagators in QCD, including
operators of dimension two and three, namely, A^2, m^2, m A^2, \ovl{\psi} \psi
and m^3. We compute analytically the coefficient functions of these operators
at three loops for all three propagators in the general covariant gauge. Our
results, taken in the Landau gauge, should help to improve the accuracy of
extracting the vacuum expectation values of these operators from lattice
simulation of the QCD propagators.Comment: 20 pages, no figure
Second order QCD corrections to inclusive semileptonic b \to Xc l \bar \nu_l decays with massless and massive lepton
We extend previous computations of the second order QCD corrections to
semileptonic b \to c inclusive transitions, to the case where the charged
lepton in the final state is massive. This allows accurate description of b \to
c \tau \bar \nu_\tau decays. We review techniques used in the computation of
O(\alpha_s^2) corrections to inclusive semileptonic b \to c transitions and
present extensive numerical studies of O(\alpha_s^2) QCD corrections to b \to c
l \bar \nu_l decays, for l =e, \tau.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, 5 table
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