Heavy-quark vacuum polarization: first two moments of the O(alphas^3 nf^2) contribution

Abstract

The vacuum polarization due to a virtual heavy quark pair and specifically the coefficients of its Taylor expansion in the external momentum are closely related to moments of the cross section for quark-antiquark pair production in electron-positron annihilation. Relating measurement and theoretically calculated Taylor coefficients, an accurate value for charm- and bottom-quark mass can be derived, once corrections from perturbative QCD are sufficiently well under control. Up to three-loop order these have been evaluated previously. We now present a subset of four-loop contributions to the lowest two moments, namely those from diagrams which involve two internal loops from massive and massless fermions coupled to virtual gluons, hence of order alphas^3 nf^2. The calculation demonstrates the applicability of Laporta's algorithm to four-loop vacuum diagrams with both massive and massless propagators and should be considered a first step towards the full evaluation of the order alphas^3 contribution.