Two-loop calculation of the anomalous dimension of the axial current with static heavy quarks

Abstract

A method to perform two-loop calculations in Eichten's effective field theory for heavy quarks is developed. The anomalous dimension of the axial current for static heavy quarks is calculated at two loops. For N = 3, we get γ A (2) = − 1 36 [ 127 2 +28ξ(2)−5N f ] . This result is very important to understand completely the physical significance of the lattice measurement of the decay constant of the B meson. The two-loop correction generated by γ A (2) turns out to be small, less than 1% for four quark flavours, so that the value of the decay constant of the B meson does not need in practice renormalization group improvement. As extra results, the self-energy renormalization constant at two-loop level for a heavy static quark and that for the coupling of a heavy quark to a gluon are obtained.