Related papers: New high order relations between physical observab…
A detailed investigation of the theoretical ambiguities present in the QCD description of photon production in $e^+e^-$ annihilation is given. It is pointed out that in a well-defined perturbative analysis it is necessary to subtract the…
We consider the partition functions of QCD and QED at high temperature assuming small coupling constants, and present arguments in favor of an improved perturbative expansion in terms of unstable excitations. Our effective propagators are…
In contrast to perturbative QCD, the analytic QCD models have running coupling whose analytic properties correctly mirror those of spacelike observables. The discontinuity (spectral) function of such running coupling is expected to agree…
I review the status of the comparisons between a few measurements at hadronic colliders and perturbative QCD predictions, which emphasize the need for improving the current computations. Such improvements will be mandatory for a…
The perturbative quark-mass corrections to the $\tau$ hadronic width are analysed to $O(\alpha_s^3 m_q^2)$, using the presently available theoretical information. The behaviour of the perturbative series is investigated in order to assess…
I review recent estimates of the non-perturbative hadronic vacuum polarization contributions. Since these at present can only be evaluated in terms of experimental data of limited precision, the related uncertainties pose a serious…
Experimental tests of QCD predictions for event shape distributions combining contributions from hard and soft processes are discussed. The hard processes are predicted by perturbative QCD calculations. The soft processes cannot be…
An evaluation of the effective QED coupling at the scale M_Z is presented. It employs the predictions of perturbative QCD for the cross section of electron positron annihilation into hadrons up to order \alpha_s^2, including the full quark…
Hadronic tau decays offer the possibility of determining the strong coupling alpha_s at relatively low energy. Precisely for this reason, however, good control over the perturbative QCD corrections, the non-perturbative condensate…
The theory of strong interactions, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), is quite successful in the prediction and description of main features of multiparticle production processes at high energies. The general perturbative QCD approach to these…
Hadronic decays of the $\tau$ lepton provide a clean environment to study hadron dynamics in an energy regime dominated by resonances, with the interesting information captured in the spectral functions. Recent results from ALEPH on…
Understanding the behavior of dense hadronic matter is a central goal in nuclear physics as it governs the nature and dynamics of astrophysical objects such as supernovae and neutron stars. Because of the non-perturbative nature of quantum…
Power corrections to hadronic event shapes are estimated using a recently suggested relationship between perturbative and non-perturbative effects in QCD. The infrared cutoff dependence of perturbative calculations is related to…
Dispersion relations---a corollary of unitarity and analyticity---are among the few methods which can be employed to study low energy processes in QCD. In this work we critically revisit the calculation of decay widths of a hypothetical…
Hadronic tau decays represent a clean laboratory for the precise study of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Observables (sum rules) based on the spectral functions of hadronic tau decays can be related to QCD quark-level calculations to…
The moments of the hadronic spectral functions are of interest for the extraction of the strong coupling $\alpha_s$ and other QCD parameters from the hadronic decays of the $\tau$ lepton. Motivated by the recent analyses of a large class of…
Leading order (in $\alpha_s$) perturbative QCD and power ($1/m_b^2)$ corrections to the hadronic invariant mass and hadron energy spectra in the decay $B \to X_s \ell^+ \ell^-$ are reviewed in the standard model using the heavy quark…
The technique of conformal mappings is applied to enlarge the convergence of the Borel series and to accelerate the convergence of Borel-summed Green functions in perturbative QCD. We use the optimal mapping, which takes into account the…
Perturbative QCD is the appropriate tool to describe many important properties of the inclusive observables measured at electron-proton (or ion) colliders, such as the energy dependence of the total cross sections in well-chosen kinematical…
We discuss the question of the relevance of perturbative QCD calculations for analyzing the properties of the dense medium produced in heavy ion collisions. Up to now leading order perturbative estimates have been worked out and confronted…