Related papers: Exploring arbitrarily high orders of optimized per…
The recent calculation of the four-loop beta function in QCD provides further evidence that the Banks-Zaks expansion in 16half-n_f is sufficiently well behaved to be useful even for n_f=2 light flavours. This expansion inherently predicts…
The recent QCD calculations of the five-loop beta function and of R(e+e-) to O(alpha_s^4) provide one more term in the Banks-Zaks expansion in (16.5-nf). There is no longer any hope that the expansion could extend, even crudely, to low nf.…
Perturbative QCD, when optimized by the principle of minimal sensitivity at fourth order, yields finite results for R(e+e-)(Q) down to Q=0. For two massless flavours (n_f=2) this occurs because the couplant "freezes" at a fixed point of the…
We study the conformal window of QCD using perturbation theory, starting from the perturbative upper edge and going down as much as we can towards the strongly coupled regime. We do so by exploiting the available five-loop computation of…
We revisit the extraction of $\alpha_s(M_\tau^2)$ from the QCDperturbative corrections to the hadronic $\tau$ branching ratio, using an improved fixed-order perturbation theory based on the explicit summation of all renormalization-group…
Physical quantities in QCD are independent of renormalization scheme (RS), but that exact invariance is spoiled by truncations of the perturbation series. "Optimization" corresponds to making the perturbative approximant, at any given…
We analyse the fixed points of QCD at high loop order in a variety of renormalization schemes and gauges across the conformal window. We observe that in the minimal momentum subtraction scheme solutions for the Banks-Zaks fixed point…
The QCD-coupling is a necessary input in the computation of many observables, and the parametric error on input parameters can be a dominant source of uncertainty. The coupling can be extracted by comparing high order perturbative…
In both QCD and supersymmetric QCD (SQCD) with N_f flavors there are conformal windows where the theory is asymptotically free in the ultraviolet while the infrared physics is governed by a non-trivial fixed-point. In SQCD, the lower N_f…
We analyse the critical exponents relating to the quark mass anomalous dimension and beta-function at the Banks-Zaks fixed point in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in a variety of representations for the quark in the momentum subtraction (MOM)…
We present a new approach to determining the strong coupling $\alpha_s(Q)$, over the entire range of validity of perturbative QCD, for scales above $\Lambda_{\mathrm{QCD}}$ and up to the Planck scale $\sim1.22\cdot10^{19}$\,GeV, with the…
The experimental data collected by KEDR and BESIII collaborations at the energies below charm quark thresholds are compared with the QCD expressions for the $e^+e^-$ annihilation R-ratio truncated at different orders of perturbation theory.…
In QCD with 16\half-epsilon massless quark flavours there is an infrared fixed point with alpha_s/pi = (8/321)epsilon in the limit epsilon -> 0+. I develop the idea of Banks and Zaks to expand about N_f=16\half. This expansion is certainly…
We consider the behaviour of the perturbative QCD corrections to the R(e+e-) ratio in the limit that the c.m. energy sqrt(s) vanishes. We find that for N(f)<9 flavours of massless quarks, the perturbative correction to the parton model…
We propose a renormalon-inspired resummation of QCD perturbation theory based on approximating the renormalization scheme (RS) invariant effective charge beta-function coefficients by the portion containing the highest power of…
These lecture notes focus on the bound state sector of QCD. Motivated by data which suggests that the strong coupling \alpha_s(Q) freezes at low Q, and by similarities between the spectra of hadrons and atoms, I discuss if and how QCD bound…
Motivated by recent preliminary results from the SLD Collaboration on the measurement of angle-dependent B-Bbar energy correlations in Z^0 -> b bbar events, we propose a class of observables that can be computed as a power expansion in the…
A physical characterization of Landau singularities is emphasized, which should trace the lower boundary N_f^* of the conformal window in QCD and supersymmetric QCD. A natural way to disentangle ``perturbative'' from ``non-perturbative''…
We consider the exclusive decay $B\to J/\psi K$ using the QCD-improved factorization method in the heavy quark limit. It is shown that the decay amplitude is factorizable in this limit and nonfactorizable contributions are calculable from…
We apply the optimization procedure based on the Principle of Minimal Sensitivity to the third-order calculation of $\R$. The effective couplant remains finite, freezing to a value $\alpha_s/\pi = 0.26$ at low energies. Using…