Quark mixing renormalization effects in the determination of |V_{tq}|

Abstract

We study the numerical effects of several renormalization schemes of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix on the top-quark decay widths. We then employ these results to infer the relative shifts in the CKM parameters |V_{tq}|^2 due to the quark mixing renormalization corrections, assuming that they are determined directly from the top-quark partial decay widths, without imposing unitarity constraints. We also discuss the implications of these effects on the ratio R = Gamma(t -> Wb) / Gamma_t and the determination of |V_{tb}|^2.