# Renormalization of Currents for Massive FermionsPresented at Lattice ’98, 14–18 July 1998, Boulder, Colorado FERMILAB-CONF-98/332-T

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Like many groups, we and our collaborators are calculating form factors of semi-leptonic decays,

$`BDl\nu \text{[1]},`$ $`B\pi l\nu \text{[2]},`$ (1)   
$`DKl\nu \text{[3]},`$ $`D\pi l\nu \text{[3]},`$ (2)   
and similar decays to the vector mesons $`D^{}`$, $`K^{}`$, or $`\rho `$. This paper discusses the renormalization—including effects of the nonzero quark masses—of the weak currents inducing the transitions. The form factors are needed to an accuracy of a few per cent, so it would be ideal to devise a fully nonperturbative renormalization program. We show here how certain ratios of transitions induced by vector and axial-vector currents take care of most, but not all, of the renormalization nonperturbatively. We also give the residual one-loop radiative corrections to these ratios. They are a few per cent. One should expect, therefore, that the uncalculated higher-order corrections will not be needed for some time.

Our analysis differs from that of the Alpha Collaboration  in its treatment of the quark masses. First, in no decay may the quarks be considered degenerate. Second, the masses of the charmed and bottom quarks are larger than the energy scale of chromodynamics, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$. Consequently, chiral Ward indentities are not helpful for normalizing axial-vector currents. Third, these masses are usually, in practice, not small compared to the lattice cutoff. Therefore, to isolate the leading mass dependence into coefficient functions (rather than matrix elements) we apply the mass-dependent improvement program of Ref.  to the clover action. In particular, we keep nonzero quark masses in Feynman diagrams; for a transition such as $`bu`$ the up quark’s mass can always be set to zero later.

At tree level currents suitable for massive fermions are given by 

$`𝒱_\mu ^{cb}`$ $`=`$ $`Z_{V^{cb}}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}^c\gamma _\mu \mathrm{\Psi }^b`$ (3)   
$`𝒜_\mu ^{cb}`$ $`=`$ $`Z_{A^{cb}}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}^c\gamma _\mu \gamma _5\mathrm{\Psi }^b`$ (4)   
where, with $`\kappa `$ denoting the hopping parameter,

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \mathrm{\Psi }^f=& \sqrt{2\kappa ^f}\left(1+ad_1^f𝜸𝑫\right)\psi ^f,\hfill \\ \hfill \overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}^f=& \sqrt{2\kappa ^f}\left(\overline{\psi }^fad_1^f(𝑫\overline{\psi }^f)𝜸\right),\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)   
and $`\psi ^f`$ is the field of flavor $`f`$ in the hopping-parameter form of the action. In the following, we speak of charmed and bottom quarks, but $`c`$ and $`b`$ really stand for distinct quark flavors.

The renormalization factors $`Z`$ depend on both masses in the current. At tree level the mass dependence factorizes

$$Z_{V^{cb}}^{[0]}=Z_{A^{cb}}^{[0]}=e^{M_1^c/2}e^{M_1^b/2},$$
(6)   
where $`M_1^f`$ is the rest mass of flavor $`f`$. Beyond tree level $`Z_VZ_A`$ and the mass dependence no longer factorizes. The main aim of this paper is to obtain the full mass dependence of $`Z_V`$ and $`Z_A`$ in one-loop perturbation theory. Note that for degenerate quarks the vector current’s absolute normalization can be used to define $`Z_{V^{ff}}`$ nonperturbatively.

The coefficient $`d_1^f`$ depends on the mass of flavor $`f`$. Beyond tree level there is no reason to expect that a universal rotation à la Eq. (5) improves all currents. One strategy is to define $`d_1^f`$ by requiring that the equal-mass vector current be conserved. For other currents and when the masses are not the same, further improvement is attained by adding higher-dimension terms—$`_j\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}i\sigma _{ij}\mathrm{\Psi }`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}D_i\mathrm{\Psi }`$, and $`_i\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\gamma _5\mathrm{\Psi }`$—to the right-hand sides of Eqs. (3) and (4), as is done with very light quarks  and in nonrelativistic QCD .

## 2 VECTOR CURRENT

Most of the renormalization can be captured by writing

$$Z_{V^{cb}}=Z_{V^{cc}}^{1/2}Z_{V^{bb}}^{1/2}R_{V^{cb}}.$$
(7)   
The equal-mass factors $`Z_{V^{\overline{q}q}}`$ are obtained nonperturbatively, leaving the expansion

$$R_{V^{cb}}=1+\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}g_0^{2l}R_{V^{cb}}^{[l]}.$$
(8)   
The one-loop term $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}`$ is set by requiring

$$\frac{c,\xi ^{}|𝒱_0^{cb}|b,\xi }{\overline{u}_{c,\xi ^{}}\gamma _0u_{b,\xi }}=1+g^2r^{[1]},$$
(9)   
to one loop, where

$$r^{[1]}=\frac{3C_F}{16\pi ^2}\left(\frac{m_b+m_c}{m_bm_c}\mathrm{ln}\frac{m_b}{m_c}2\right).$$
(10)   
The only Feynman diagram needed to compute $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}`$ is the vertex diagram. Everything associated with the legs—self energies and the factors $`e^{M_1^b/2}e^{M_1^c/2}`$—drop out by construction. From the vertex diagram with unequal masses one must subtract the average of the diagram with equal masses. From this combination one also must subtract the corresponding combination of the continuum vertex diagram. This gives $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}`$. The resulting loop integral is ultraviolet and infrared convergent. (Infrared cancellation occurs point-by-point if the masses in continuum propagators are taken equal to the corresponding kinetic masses.)

Before showing results it is worthwhile to anticipate the outcome.

See Fig. 1. $`R_{V^{cb}}`$ is symmetric under interchange of $`b`$ and $`c`$. When the two masses are equal $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[l]}=0`$, $`l1`$, by construction. When both masses are far below the lattice cutoff, $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}`$ must vanish as $`m_{b,c}a`$ to a power. (The linear term should be proportional to $`1c_{\mathrm{SW}}`$, and it is.) When both masses are much larger than the cutoff, the heavy-quark flavor symmetry (of the lattice action) ensures that the lattice contribution vanishes, i.e., $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}r^{[1]}`$. When one mass is larger than the cutoff and the other smaller, $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}`$ should resemble the radiative correction of a “static-light” current: dependence on the light mass should drop out, leaving a logarithm $`(3C_F/16\pi ^2)\mathrm{ln}M_2^ba`$ plus a constant .

Fig. 2 bears out these expectations for a set of masses with $`m_c=0.256m_b`$, appropriate to charmed and bottom quarks.

These results have been obtained independently by the two authors.

To illustrate how to apply these results, let us consider the quark masses relevant to our calculation of the semileptonic decay $`BDl\nu `$ at $`\beta =5.7`$ (and $`\stackrel{~}{c}_{\mathrm{SW}}=1`$), for which $`m_ba=3.9`$ and $`m_ca=1.0`$ . Reading off Fig. 2 one finds $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}=0.0076`$. For the strong coupling we consider the range $`\alpha _s(\pi /a)=0.19`$ to $`\alpha _s(1/a)=0.33`$. Thus, we multiply the bare matrix element with

$$R_{V^{cb}}=1+0.0076\times 4\pi \times \alpha _s=1.025(6).$$
(11)   
This estimate will be refined when we complete the calculation of the BLM  matching scale $`q^{}`$.

## 3 AXIAL-VECTOR CURRENT

For the axial-vector current one could compute $`Z_{A^{cb}}/Z_{V^{cb}}`$, with the denominator from Eq. (7). For our analysis of $`BD^{}l\nu `$, however, we need the ratio

$$R_{A^{cb}}=\frac{Z_{A^{cb}}}{Z_{A^{cc}}^{1/2}Z_{A^{bb}}^{1/2}}.$$
(12)   
The one-loop term $`R_{A^{cb}}^{[1]}`$ is set by analogy with Eq. (9), replacing $`𝒱_0`$ and $`\gamma _0`$ with $`𝒜_i`$ and $`\gamma _i\gamma _5`$, but $`r^{[1]}`$ remains as in Eq. (10). The limiting behaviors of $`R_{A^{cb}}^{[1]}`$ are as for $`R_{V^{cb}}^{[1]}`$. Our results are in Fig. 3.

## 4 OTHER COMPONENTS

Scattering matrix elements of $`𝒱_i`$ and $`𝒜_0`$ vanish as the three-momenta go to zero. They can take the same renormalization factors as $`𝒱_i`$ and $`𝒜_0`$, but commensurate effects are the one-loop corrections to $`d_1`$ and to the coefficients of other higher-dimension improvements. The nonperturbative construction of a normalized, conserved $`𝒱_\mu ^{ff}`$ implies that perturbation theory is needed only for “$`m_bm_c`$” and “$`VA`$”.

## 5 SUMMARY

By computing most of the renormalization nonperturbatively, it is possible to reduce the one-loop corrections. This is achieved by requiring a correctly normalized, conserved vector current, or by extracting physics from a ratio of correlators, such that Eq. (12) applies. Indeed, the residual coefficients shown in Figs. 2 and 3 are small. Hence, the uncalculated higher-order radiative corrections to semi-leptonic form factors are unlikely to be large.

Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association Inc., under contract with the U.S. Dept. of Energy.