There are steady advances in the calculation of electroweak corrections to massive scattering problems at colliders, from the very beginning in the nineteen seventies until contemporary developments. Recent years brought a remarkable progress due to
new calculational technologies. This was motivated by demands from phenomenological applications at particle accelerators: higher multiplicities of the final states, extreme kinematics, need of higher precision and thus of higher orders in perturbation theory. We describe selected contributions from the project Massive particle production of Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 9 of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
We provide an exact calculation of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) massive corrections to Bhabha scattering in QED, relevant for precision luminosity monitoring at meson factories. Using realistic reference event selections, exact numerical resu
lts for leptonic and hadronic corrections are given and compared with the corresponding approximate predictions of the event generator BabaYaga@NLO. It is shown that the NNLO massive corrections are necessary for luminosity measurements with per mille precision. At the same time they are found to be well accounted for in the generator at an accuracy level below the one per mille. An update of the total theoretical precision of BabaYaga@NLO is presented and possible directions for a further error reduction are sketched.
We present a new algorithm for the reduction of one-loop emph{tensor} Feynman integrals with $nleq 4$ external legs to emph{scalar} Feynman integrals $I_n^D$ with $n=3,4$ legs in $D$ dimensions, where $D=d+2l$ with integer $l geq 0$ and generic dimen
sion $d=4-2epsilon$, thus avoiding the appearance of inverse Gram determinants $()_4$. As long as $()_4 eq 0$, the integrals $I_{3,4}^D$ with $D>d$ may be further expressed by the usual dimensionally regularized scalar functions $I_{2,3,4}^d$. The integrals $I_{4}^D$ are known at $()_4 equiv 0$, so that we may extend the numerics to small, non-vanishing $()_4$ by applying a dimensional recurrence relation. A numerical example is worked out. Together with a recursive reduction of 6- and 5-point functions, derived earlier, the calculational scheme allows a stabilized reduction of $n$-point functions with $nleq 6$ at arbitrary phase space points. The algorithm is worked out explicitely for tensors of rank $Rleq n$.
The Mathematica toolkit AMBRE derives Mellin-Barnes (MB) representations for Feynman integrals in d=4-2eps dimensions. It may be applied for tadpoles as well as for multi-leg multi-loop scalar and tensor integrals. AMBRE uses a loop-by-loop approach
and aims at lowest dimensions of the final MB representations. The present version of AMBRE works fine for planar Feynman diagrams. The output may be further processed by the package MB for the determination of its singularity structure in eps. The AMBRE package contains various sample applications for Feynman integrals with up to six external particles and up to four loops.
Virtual hadronic contributions to the Bhabha process at the NNLO level are discussed. They are substantial for predictions with per mil accuracy. The studies of heavy fermion and hadron corrections complete the calculation of Bhabha virtual effects at the NNLO level.
Using dispersion relations, we derive the complete virtual QED contributions to Bhabha scattering due to vacuum polarization effects in photon propagation. We apply our result to hadronic corrections and to heavy lepton and top quark loop insertions.
We give the first complete estimate of their net numerical effects for both small and large angle scattering at typical beam energies of meson factories, LEP, and the ILC. The effects turn out to be smaller, in most cases, than those corresponding to electron loop insertions, but stay, with amounts of typically one per mille, of relevance for precision experiments. Hadronic corrections themselves are typically about 2-3 times larger than those of intermediate muon pairs (the largest heavy leptonic terms).
We discuss the determination of the infrared singularities of massive one-loop 5-point functions with Mellin-Barnes (MB) representations. Massless internal lines may lead to poles in the $eps$ expansion of the Feynman diagram, while unresolved massle
ss final state particles give endpoint singularities of the phase space integrals. MB integrals are an elegant tool for their common treatment. An evaluation by taking residues leads to inverse binomial sums.
We evaluate the two-loop corrections to Bhabha scattering from fermion loops in the context of pure Quantum Electrodynamics. The differential cross section is expressed by a small number of Master Integrals with exact dependence on the fermion masses
me, mf and the Mandelstam invariants s,t,u. We determine the limit of fixed scattering angle and high energy, assuming the hierarchy of scales me^2 << mf^2 << s,t,u. The numerical result is combined with the available non-fermionic contributions. As a by-product, we provide an independent check of the known electron-loop contributions.
