On the massless contributions to the vacuum polarization of heavy quarks

Abstract

Recently Groote and Pivovarov have given notice of a possible fault in the use of sum rules involving two-point correlation functions to extract information on heavy quark parameters, due to the presence of massless contributions that invalidate the construction of moments of the spectral densities. Here we show how to circumvent this problem through a new definition of the moments, providing an infrared safe and consistent procedure.

1+9 pages, 3 figures. Discussion on QCD sum rules applications added. Conclusions unchanged. Version to be published in Journal of Physics G