Isospin Violation and the Magnetic Moment of the Muon

Abstract

We calculate the leading isospin-violating and electromagnetic corrections for the decay tau -> pi^0 pi nu_tau at low energies. The corrections are small but relevant for the inclusion of tau decay data in the determination of hadronic vacuum polarization especially for the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. We show that part of the systematic differences between the measured form factors in tau -> pi^0 pi nu_tau and e^+ e^- -> pi^+ pi^- is due to isospin violation .

Comments: 12 pages, 2 figures, minor revisions in the text, references added, version to appear in Physics Letters B