Climbing NLO and NNLO Summits of Weak Decays: 1988-2023

TL;DR

This paper reviews the historical development and recent advances in calculating NLO and NNLO QCD corrections to weak meson decays and mixing, highlighting their importance for testing the Standard Model and exploring new physics.

Contribution

It provides an up-to-date, non-technical overview of the progress in high-order corrections in weak decays from 1988 to 2023, including recent EFT calculations.

Findings

Progressed from LO to NNLO in QCD corrections for weak decays.

Summarized recent Standard Model Effective Field Theory calculations.

Highlighted processes where these corrections are essential for new physics searches.

Abstract

I describe the history of the calculations of NLO and NNLO QCD corrections to weak decays of mesons and particle-antiparticle mixing in the period 1988-2023. Also existing calculations of electroweak and QED corrections to these processes are included in this presentation. These efforts bear some analogies to the climbing of Himalayas and various expeditions by several teams of strongly motivated "climbers" allowed to move this field from the LO through the NLO to the NNLO level. We also summarize the most recent calculations within the Standard Model Effective Field Theory. The material is meant to be an up to date review of this very advanced field in non-technical terms as much as possible and a guide to the rich literature on NLO and NNLO corrections in question. In particular we stress for which processes these calculations are crucial for the tests of the Standard Model and to be able to differentiate between numerous New Physics models. It includes several anecdotes related to the climbs that I was involved in. I hope that some of the comments made in the course of the presentation could turn out to be not only amusing but also instructive.