Two-loop scalar self-energies and pole masses in a general renormalizable theory with massless gauge bosons

Abstract

I present the two-loop self-energy functions for scalar bosons in a general renormalizable theory, within the approximation that vector bosons are treated as massless or equivalently that gauge symmetries are unbroken. This enables the computation of the two-loop physical pole masses of scalar particles in that approximation. The calculations are done simultaneously in the mass-independent $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$, $\overline{\mathrm{DR}}$, and ${\overline{\mathrm{DR}}}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ renormalization schemes, and with arbitrary covariant gauge fixing. As an example, I present the two-loop supersymmetric quantum chromodynamics corrections to squark masses, which can increase the known one-loop results by of order 1%. More generally, it is now straightforward to implement all two-loop sfermion pole mass computations in supersymmetry using the results given here, neglecting only the electroweak vector boson masses compared to the superpartner masses in the two-loop parts.