Third order correction to semileptonic $b\to u$ decay: fermionic contributions

Abstract

We present the QCD corrections of order $\alpha_s^3$ to the decay rate of $b \to u \ell \bar \nu_\ell$, with $\ell = e,\mu$, originating from diagrams with closed fermion loops and neglecting the mass of the up quark. Our calculation relies on integration-by-parts reduction of Feynman integrals with one propagator raised to a symbolic power in Kira and the numerical evaluation of master integrals with AMFlow. This allows us to obtain results for the fermionic contributions to the total semileptonic rate with an accuracy of more than thirty digits.