No Arabic abstract
From soft-collinear effective theory one can derive a factorization formula for the e+e- thrust distribution dsigma/dtau with tau = 1-T that is applicable for all tau. The formula accommodates available O(alpha_s^3) fixed-order QCD results, resummation of logarithms at NNNLL order, a universal nonperturbative soft function for hadronization effects, factorization of nonperturbative effects in subleading power contributions, bottom mass effects and QED corrections. We emphasize that the use of Monte Carlos to estimate hadronization effects is not compatible with high-precision, high-order analyses. We present a global analysis of all available e+e- thrust data measured at Q = 35 to 207 GeV in the tail region, where a two-parameter fit can be carried out for alpha_s(m_Z) and Omega_1, the first moment of the soft function. To obtain small theoretical errors it is essential to define Omega_1 in a short-distance scheme, free of an O(Lambda_QCD) renormalon ambiguity. We find alpha_s(m_Z) = 0.1135 +- (0.0002)_expt +- (0.0005)_Omega_1 +- (0.0009)_pert with chi^2/dof = 0.9.
We consider the effects of quark masses to the perturbative thrust in $e^+e^-$ annihilation. In particular we show that perturbative power corrections resulting from non-zero quark masses considerably alters the size of the non-perturbative power corrections and consequently, significantly changes the fitted value of $alpha_s$.
The order $alpha_s^2$ perturbative QCD correction to the Gottfried sum rule is obtained. The result is based on numerical calculation of the order $alpha_s^2$ contribution to the coefficient function and on the new estimate of the three-loop anomalous dimension term. The correction found is negative and rather small. Therefore it does not affect the necessity to introduce flavour-asymmetry between $bar{u}$ and $bar{d}$ antiquarks for the description of NMC result for the Gottfried sum rule.
We revisit the analysis of the improved ladder Schwinger-Dyson (SD) equation for the dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in QCD with emphasizing the importance of the scale ambiguity. Previous calculation done so far naively used one-loop MSbar coupling in the improved ladder SD equation without examining the scale ambiguity. As a result, the calculated pion decay constant f_pi was less than a half of its experimental value f_pi=92.4MeV once the QCD scale is fixed from the high energy coupling alpha_s(M_Z). In order to settle the ambiguity in a proper manner, we adopt here in the present paper the next-to-leading-order effective coupling instead of a naive use of the MSbar coupling. The pion decay constant f_pi is then calculated from high energy QCD coupling strength alpha_s(M_Z)=0.1172 pm 0.0020. Within the Higashijima-Miransky approximation, we obtain f_pi=85--106MeV depending on the value of alpha_s(M_Z) which agrees well with the experimentally observed value f_pi=92.4MeV. The validity of the improved ladder SD equation is therefore ascertained more firmly than considered before.
We compute in order alpha_s the nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) short-distance coefficients that match quark-antiquark operators of all orders in the heavy-quark velocity v to the electromagnetic current. We employ a new method to compute the one-loop NRQCD contribution to the matching condition. The new method uses full-QCD expressions as a starting point to obtain the NRQCD contribution, thus greatly streamlining the calculation. Our results show that, under a mild constraint on the NRQCD operator matrix elements, the NRQCD velocity expansion for the quark-antiquark-operator contributions to the electromagnetic current converges. The velocity expansion converges rapidly for approximate J/psi operator matrix elements.
We revisit the earlier determination of alpha_s(M_Z) via perturbative analyses of short-distance-sensitive lattice observables, incorporating new lattice data and performing a modified version of the original analysis. We focus on two high-intrinsic-scale observables, log(W_11) and log(W_12), and one lower-intrinsic scale observable, log(W_{12}/u_0^6), finding improved consistency among the values extracted using the different observables and a final result, alpha_s(M_Z)=0.1192(11), 2 sigma higher than the earlier result, in excellent agreement with recent non-lattice determinations and, in addition, in good agreement with the results of a similar, but not identical, re-analysis by the HPQCD Collaboration. A discussion of the relation between the two re-analyses is given, focussing on the complementary aspects of the two approaches.