Threshold Corrections to the Bottom Quark Mass Revisited

Abstract

Threshold corrections to the bottom quark mass are often estimated under the approximation that tan$\beta$ enhanced contributions are the most dominant. In this work we revisit this common approximation made to the estimation of the supersymmetric threshold corrections to the bottom quark mass. We calculate the full one-loop supersymmetric corrections to the bottom quark mass and survey a large part of the phenomenological MSSM parameter space to study the validity of considering only the tan$\beta$ enhanced corrections. Our analysis demonstrates that this approximation underestimates the size of the threshold corrections by $\sim$12.5% for most of the considered parameter space. We discuss the consequences for fitting the bottom quark mass and for the effective couplings to Higgses. We find that it is important to consider the additional contributions when fitting the bottom quark mass but the modifications to the effective Higgs couplings are typically $\mathcal{O}$(few)% for the majority of the parameter space considered.

Comments: 24 pages, 9 figures, 1 table; error in analysis corrected, results substantially modified, version to be submitted to JHEP