Extended Projection Method for Massive Fermion

Abstract

Tensor reduction is important for multi-loop amplitude calculation. And the projection method is one of the most popular approaches for tensor reduction. However, projection method could be problematic for amplitude with massive fermions due to the inconsistency between helicity and chirality. We propose an approach to extend the projection method to reduce the loop amplitude containing fermion chain with two massive spinors. The extension is achieved by decomposing one of the massive spinors into two specific massless spinors, "null spinor" and "reference spinor". Then the extended projection method can be safely implemented for all the processes including the production of massive fermions. Finally we present the tensor reduction for the virtual Z boson decaying to top-quark pair to demonstrate our approach.