We reanalyze the two-loop electroweak hadronic contributions to the muon g-2 that may be enhanced by large logarithms. The present evaluation is improved over those already existing in the literature by the implementation of the current algebra Ward identities and the inclusion of the correct short-distance QCD behaviour of the relevant hadronic Greens function.
We reevaluate the hadronic contributions to the muon magnetic anomaly, and to the running of the electromagnetic coupling constant at the Z-boson mass. We include new pi+pi- cross-section data from KLOE, all available multi-hadron data from BABAR, a reestimation of missing low-energy contributions using results on cross sections and process dynamics from BABAR, a reevaluation of all experimental contributions using the software package HVPTools, together with a reanalysis of inter-experiment and inter-channel correlations, and a reevaluation of the continuum contributions from perturbative QCD at four loops. These improvements lead to a decrease in the hadronic contributions with respect to earlier evaluations. For the muon g-2 we find lowest-order hadronic contributions of (692.3 +- 4.2) 10^-10 and (701.5 +- 4.7) 10^-10 for the e+e- based and tau-based analyses, respectively, and full Standard Model predictions that differ by 3.6 sigma and 2.4 sigma from the experimental value. For the e+e- based five-quark hadronic contribution to alpha(MZ) we find Delta_alpha_had[5](MZ)=(275.7 +- 1.0) 10^-4. The reduced electromagnetic coupling strength at MZ leads to an increase by 7 GeV in the most probable Higgs boson mass obtained by the standard Gfitter fit to electroweak precision data.
The evaluation of the hadronic contribution to the muon magnetic anomaly $a_mu$ is revisited, taking advantage of new experimental data on $e^+e^-$ annihilation into hadrons: SND and CMD-2 for the $pi^+pi^-$ channel, and babar for multihadron final states. Discrepancies are observed between KLOE and CMD-2/SND data, preventing one from averaging all the $e^+e^-$ results. The long-standing disagreement between spectral functions obtained from $tau$ decays and $e^+e^-$ annihilation is still present, and not accounted by isospin-breaking corrections, for which new estimates have been presented. The updated Standard Model value for $a_mu$ based on $e^+e^-$ annihilation data is now reaching a precision better than experiment, and it disagrees with the direct measurement from BNL at the 3.3$sigma$ level, while the $tau$-based estimate is in much better agreement. The $tau$/$e^+e^-$ discrepancy, best revealed when comparing the measured branching fraction for $tau^- to pi^- pi^0 u_tau$ to its prediction from the isospin-breaking-corrected $e^+e^-$ spectral function, remains a serious problem to be understood.
We present the mini-proceedings of the workshops Hadronic contributions to the muon anomalous magnetic moment: strategies for improvements of the accuracy of the theoretical prediction and $(g-2)_{mu}$: Quo vadis?, both held in Mainz from April 1$^{rm rst}$ to 5$^{rm th}$ and from April 7$^{rm th}$ to 10$^{rm th}$, 2014, respectively.
The current $3.7sigma$ discrepancy between the Standard Model prediction and the experimental value of the muon anomalous magnetic moment could be a hint for the existence of new physics. The hadronic light-by-light contribution is one of the pieces requiring improved precision on the theory side, and an important step is to derive short-distance constraints for this quantity containing four electromagnetic currents. Here, we derive such short-distance constraints for three large photon loop virtualities and the external fourth photon in the static limit. The static photon is considered as a background field and we construct a systematic operator product expansion in the presence of this field. We show that the massless quark loop, i.e. the leading term, is numerically dominant over non-perturbative contributions up to next-to-next-to leading order, both those suppressed by quark masses and those that are not.
We propose a novel approach to determine the leading hadronic corrections to the muon g-2. It consists in a measurement of the effective electromagnetic coupling in the space-like region extracted from Bhabha scattering data. We argue that this new method may become feasible at flavor factories, resulting in an alternative determination potentially competitive with the accuracy of the present results obtained with the dispersive approach via time-like data.