The τ lepton as a laboratory for quantum chromodynamics

✍ Scribed by Michel Davier; Andreas Höcker

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 337 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1631-0705
• DOI: 10.1016/s1631-0705(02)01391-9

✦ Synopsis

Decays of the τ lepton provide a clean environment to study hadron dynamics in an energy regime dominated by resonances. Inclusive spectral functions are the basis for quantum chromodynamics (QCD) analyses, providing a most accurate determination of the strong coupling constant and quantitative information on nonperturbative contributions. The τ vector spectral function is used together with e + e -data in order to compute vacuum polarization integrals arising in the calculations of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the running of the electromagnetic coupling constant.