NNLO Final-State Quark-Pair Corrections in Implicit Regularization

Abstract

We investigate the NNLO final-state quark-pair correction to the decay of a neutral axial-vector current ($Z$) into massless quarks within Implicit Regularization (IReg), in the limit of large $N_f$. Our calculation tests, at two loops, the recursive subtraction of ultraviolet subdivergences and the cancellation of infrared singularities between virtual and real contributions in a framework that does not rely on analytical continuation in spacetime dimension. After renormalization and phase-space integration, the regulator-dependent logarithms cancel and the known $N_f$ contribution to the inclusive rate is recovered. The result provides a non-trivial NNLO check of gauge invariance, renormalization consistency, and perturbative unitarity in IReg. In precision multi-loop calculations, fixed-dimension regularization methods can be advantageous by avoiding the dimensional continuation of intrinsically four-dimensional structures, such as $γ_5$ matrices and Levi-Civita tensors, thereby reducing ambiguities and symmetry-restoring counterterms.