The running of the electroweak gauge couplings from first principles

Abstract

We present a high-precision calculation of the hadronic running of electroweak gauge couplings from first principles. Employing lattice QCD in the low-energy regime, we achieve permille precision for virtualities $Q^2 \lesssim 12\;\mathrm{GeV}^2$. At $Q^2 \simeq 1\;\mathrm{GeV}^2$, our determination deviates by up to $7σ$ from estimates based on $e^+e^-$ measurements. Combining lattice QCD with perturbative QCD via the Euclidean split technique, we obtain for the electromagnetic coupling $Δα^{(5)}_{\mathrm{had}}(M_Z^2) = 0.027821(34)_{\mathrm{lat}}(35)_{\mathrm{pQCD}}$, which is more than twice as precise as recent phenomenological determinations. We assess improvement scenarios by which the precision target for next-generation electroweak measurements could be reached.