Electroweak corrections to muon pair production in electron-positron annihilation at high energy

• Published in: Nuclear physics. B Vol. 263; no. 2; pp. 347 - 398
• Main Authors: Igarashi, Masataka, Nakazawa, Nobuya, Shimada, Tokuzo, Shimizu, Yoshimitsu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.01.1986
• ISSN: 0550-3213; 1873-1562
• DOI: 10.1016/0550-3213(86)90122-7

The lowest-order radiative corrections to the reaction e + + e − → μ + + μ − are analyzed in the standard SU(2) × U(1) electroweak theory. The virtual corrections are calculated in the on-shell renormalization scheme. The masses of the recently discovered Z-boson and W-boson are used to fix the weak coupling constants. The decay width of the Z-boson is also taken into account. By including the cross section of hard photon emission, various kinds of distribution are obtained both analytically and numerically. The magnitude of the effective axial vector coupling is confirmed to be quite different from that previously taken in the calculations within QED. This difference, which is due to the genuine electroweak corrections, reaches about 10% in angular distribution at the energy around the Z-boson mass, even if the reasonable effect of a hard photon is included.