A mass-dependent beta-function

Abstract

Threshold effects related to fermion masses are considered for an all-order beta-function based on a background field momentum subtraction scheme. Far away from all thresholds, the suggested beta-function reduces to the conjectured all-order form inspired by the Novikov-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov beta-function of N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories with a fixed integer number of fermion flavours. At (formally) infinite masses the corresponding pure Yang--Mills beta-function is recovered. We discuss applications to the phase diagram of non-Abelian field theories.

12 pages, 9 figures. v2 & v3: references and comments added; v3: appendix added