Review on the determination of alpha_s from the QCD static energy

Abstract

We review the determination of the strong coupling alpha_s from the comparison of the perturbative expression for the Quantum Chromodynamics static energy with lattice data. We collect here all the perturbative expressions needed to evaluate the static energy at the currently known accuracy.

Comments: 14 pages, 4 figures. Invited brief review for Modern Physics Letters A. v2: Minor changes, references added. Journal version. v3: Misprint corrected in Eq.(17), results unchanged