Heavy quark mass effects and improved tests of the flavour independence of strong interactions

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent tests of the flavour independence of strong interactions, highlighting heavy quark mass effects and their incorporation into QCD calculations, with results supporting flavour independence and discussing b-quark mass measurements.

Contribution

It provides updated analysis of heavy quark mass effects in strong interactions and confirms flavour independence at next-to-leading order in QCD.

Findings

Strong-coupling ratios are consistent with unity.

Heavy quark mass effects are significant and accounted for.

b-quark mass at M_Z is discussed.

Abstract

A review is given of latest results on tests of the flavour independence of strong interactions. Heavy quark mass effects are evident in the data and are now taken into account at next-to-leading order in QCD perturbation theory. The strong-coupling ratios alpha_s^b/alpha_s^uds and alpha_s^c/alpha_s^uds are found to be consistent with unity. Determinations of the b-quark mass m_b(M_Z) are discussed.