We calculate the parametrically dominant next-to-next-to-leading order corrections to four-fermion production e^- e^+ -> mu^- nubar_mu u dbar + X at centre-of-mass energies near the W-pair production threshold employing the method of unstable-particle effective theory. In total the correction is small, leading to a shift of 3 MeV in the W-mass measurement. We also discuss the implementation of realistic cuts and provide a result for the interference of single-Coulomb and soft radiative corrections that can easily be extended to include an arbitrary number of Coulomb photons.
We perform a dedicated study of the four-fermion production process e- e+ -> mu- nubar_mu u dbar X near the W pair-production threshold in view of the importance of this process for a precise measurement of the W boson mass. Accurate theoretical predictions for this process require a systematic treatment of finite-width effects. We use unstable-particle effective field theory (EFT) to perform an expansion in the coupling constants, GammaW/MW, and the non-relativistic velocity v of the W boson up to next-to-leading order in GammaW/MW ~ alpha_ew ~ v^2. We find that the dominant theoretical uncertainty in MW is currently due to an incomplete treatment of initial-state radiation. The remaining uncertainty of the NLO EFT calculation translates into delta MW ~ 10-15 MeV, and to about 5 MeV with additional input from the NLO four-fermion calculation in the full theory.
In this talk, I review the effective theory approach to unstable particle production and present results of a calculation of the process e- e+ ->mu- nubar_mu u dbar X near the W-pair production threshold up to next-to-leading order in GammaW/MW ~ alpha ~ v^2. The remaining theoretical uncertainty and the impact on the measurement of the W mass is discussed.
The recently completed calculation of the full electroweak O(alpha) corrections to the charged-current four-fermion production processes e+e- --> nu_tau tau+ mu- anti-nu_mu, u anti-d mu- anti-nu_mu, and u anti-d s anti-c is briefly reviewed. The calculation is performed using complex gauge-boson masses, supplemented by complex couplings to restore gauge invariance. The evaluation of the occurring one-loop tensor integrals, which include 5- and 6-point functions, requires new techniques. The effects of the complete O(alpha) corrections to the total cross section and to some differential cross sections of physical interest are discussed and compared to predictions based on the double-pole approximation, revealing that the latter approximation is not sufficient to fully exploit the potential of a future linear collider in an analysis of W-boson pairs at high energies.
We compute the third-order correction to the heavy-quark current correlation function due to the emission and absorption of an ultrasoft gluon. Our result supplies a missing contribution to top-quark pair production near threshold and the determination of the bottom quark mass from QCD sum rules.
We discuss the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) corrections to the total cross section for (pseudo-) scalar Higgs boson production. The computation is carried out in the effective Lagrangian approach which emerges from the standard model by taking the limit $m_t to infty$ where $m_t$ denotes the mass of the top quark.