Differences Between the Pole and On-Shell Masses and Widths of the Higgs Boson

Abstract

The differences between the on-shell mass and width of the Higgs boson and their pole counterparts are evaluated in leading order. For a heavy Higgs boson, they are found to be sensitive functions of the gauge parameter and become numerically large over a class of gauges that includes the unitary gauge. For a light Higgs boson, the differences remain small in all gauges. The pinch-technique mass and width are found to be close to their pole counterparts over a large range of Higgs boson masses.

Comments: 9 pages (Latex), 3 figures (Postscript)