Massive Tadpoles: Techniques and Applications

Abstract

A brief discussion of massive tadpole diagrams and their phenomenological consequences is presented. This includes predictions of the $\rho$ parameter and, as a consequence, the mass of the $W$ boson, implications on the charm and bottom quark masses from the moments, i.e. the derivatives of the current correlators, and the Higgs boson decay rate. A fairly consistent picture emerges, with $m_c(3 {GeV})=0.986\pm0.013$ GeV and $m_b(m_b)=3.610\pm0.016$ GeV. Furthermore, fairly stringent predictions for the Higgs decay rate into photons and gluons are obtained, which will be interesting in increasingly precise experiments.