Experimental Evidence for Electroweak Corrections Beyond Fermion Loops

Abstract

We reemphasize the importance of discriminating fermion-loop and bosonic electroweak corrections in the analysis of electroweak precision data. Most recent data are indeed precise enough to require corrections beyond (trivial) fermion loops. An analysis of these data in terms of the observables $\Delta x \equiv \epsilon_{N1} - \epsilon_{N2}$, $\Delta y \equiv - \epsilon_{N2}$ and $\epsilon \equiv - \epsilon_{N3}$ identifies the required additional corrections as vertex corrections at the $W^\pm f\bar f^\prime$ and $Z^0 f\bar f$ vertices. Standard-model values for these corrections are consistent with the experimental data.