Higgs Decay H -->\gamma\gamma\ through a W Loop: Difficulty with Dimensional Regularization

Abstract

Since the photon has no mass, it does not couple directly to the Higgs particle. This implies that the one-loop correction to the decay H --> \gamma\gamma\ is necessarily finite. Therefore, this correction should be calculable without introducing either regularization or ghosts. Such a calculation is carried out in this paper for the case of one W loop. The result obtained this way turns out not to agree with the previous, well-known one, and it is argued that the present result is to be preferred because it satisfies the decoupling theorem. The discrepancy can be traced to the use of dimensional regularization in the previous result.