Two-loop electroweak threshold corrections to the bottom and top Yukawa couplings

Abstract

We study the relationship between the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ Yukawa coupling and the pole mass for the bottom and top quarks at the two-loop electroweak order ${\cal O}(\alpha^2)$ in the gaugeless limit of the standard model. We also consider the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ to pole mass relationships at this order, which include tadpole contributions to ensure the gauge independence of the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ masses. In order to suppress numerically large tadpole contributions, we propose a redefinition of the running heavy-quark mass in terms of the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ Yukawa coupling. We also present $\Delta r$ in the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ scheme at ${\cal O}(\alpha^2)$ in the gaugeless limit. As an aside, we also list the exact two-loop expression for the mass counterterms of the bottom and top quarks.