Hadronic contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment to next-to-next-to-leading order

Abstract

We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order hadronic contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment originating from the photon vacuum polarization. The corresponding three-loop kernel functions are calculated using asymptotic expansion techniques which lead to analytic expressions. Our final result, $a_\mu^{\rm had,NNLO} = 1.24 \pm 0.01 \times 10^{-10}$, has the same order of magnitude as the current uncertainty of the leading order hadronic contribution and should thus be included in future analyses.