Massive
quark production in electron positron annihilation
to order 
K.G. Chetyrkin1,2 - A.H. Hoang3 - J.H. Kühn1 - M. Steinhauser4 - T. Teubner5
1 Institut für Theoretische Teilchenphysik, Universität Karlsruhe,
D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
2 Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences,
Moscow 117312, Russia
3 Department of Physics, University of California,
San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0319, USA
4 Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Werner-Heisenberg-Institut,
D-80805 Munich, Germany
5 Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY,
D-22603 Hamburg, Germany
Received: 12 November 1997
Abstract
Recent analytical and numerical results for the three-loop
polarization function allow to present a phenomenological analysis
of the cross section for massive quark production in electron positron
annihilation to order . Numerical predictions based on fixed
order perturbation theory are presented for charm and bottom
production above 5 and 11.5 GeV, respectively. The contribution
from these energy regions to
, the running QED coupling
constant at scale MZ, are given. The dominant terms close to threshold,
i.e. in an expansion for small quark velocity
, are presented
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