The radiative return at phi- and B-factories: FSR for muon pair production at next-to-leading order

Abstract

Muon pair production through the radiative return is of importance for a measurement of the hadronic production cross section in two ways: it provides an independent calibration and it may give rise to an important background for a measurement of the pion form factor. With this motivation the Monte Carlo event generator PHOKHARA is extended to include next-to-leading order radiative corrections to the reaction $e^+e^-\to \mu^+\mu^-\gamma$. Furthermore, virtual ISR corrections to FSR from pions are introduced, which extends the applicability of the generator into a new kinematical regime. Finally, the effect of photon vacuum polarization is introduced into this new version of the generator.