Life of \Pi

Abstract

The heavy-quark contribution to the polarisation function $\Pi$ at higher perturbative orders is presently only known approximately. We scrutinise the accuracy of state-of-the-art approximations at three- and four-loop order. At three loops, we present for the first time a result with arbitrary numerical precision for general kinematics and compare to the best Padé estimate. At four loops, we calculate the fourth (inverse) moment of the non-singlet heavy-quark vacuum polarisation in order to test the prediction for this moment based on Padé approximation.

Comments: 21 pages, 2 figures. Equivalent to journal version