Two-Loop QED Heavy-Flavor Contribution to Bhabha Scattering

Abstract

We briefly review the status of the calculation of next-to-next-to-leading order corrections to large angle Bhabha scattering in pure QED. In particular, we focus on the analytic calculation of the two-loop virtual corrections involving a heavy-flavor fermion loop, which was recently completed. We conclude by assessing the numerical impact of these corrections on the Bhabha scattering cross section at colliders operating at a center of mass energy of 1 GeV and at the future ILC.

6 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the Proceedings of the 9th DESY workshop on "Loops and Legs in Quantum Field Theory", Sondershausen, April 2008. References added