English

Extending the Kinetic Mass to Higher Orders in $1/m_Q$

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-02-25 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Currently, the kinetic mass is defined in terms of the pole mass and operators at order 1/mQ21/m_Q^2, which are known to N3^3LO accuracy in αs\alpha_s. At the same time, the Heavy Quark Expansion (HQE) for inclusive semileptonic decays is known up to and including terms of order 1/mQ51/m_Q^5. Therefore, it is desirable to extend the definition of the kinetic mass to higher orders in 1/mQ1/m_Q. The original kinetic mass is based on the hadron-mass formula in Heavy Quark Effective Theory (HQET). However, the HQE is formulated in terms of matrix elements defined in full QCD to avoid the appearance of non-local matrix elements. To avoid this, we develop a definition of the kinetic mass rooted in full QCD. Starting from the hadron-mass formula derived from the energy-momentum tensor of full QCD, we define a relation between a general mass and the pole mass. Using a simple cut-off scheme, we compute a generalized kinetic mass at one loop to all powers of 1/mQ1/m_Q, which reproduces the well-known results for the kinetic mass up to 1/mQ21/m_Q^2. Our approach opens the road to a consistent use of the kinetic mass at higher-orders in the heavy quark expansion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.21139,
  title  = {Extending the Kinetic Mass to Higher Orders in $1/m_Q$},
  author = {Thomas Mannel and Ilija S. Milutin and Rens Verkade and K. Keri Vos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.21139},
  year   = {2026}
}