Massive Tadpoles: Techniques and Applications

Abstract A brief discussion of massive tadpole diagrams and their phenomenological consequences is presented. This includes predictions of the ρ parameter and, as a consequence, the mass of the W boson, implications on the charm and bottom quark masses from the moments, i.e. the derivatives of the current correlators, and the Higgs boson decay rate. A fairly consistent picture emerges, with m c ( 3 GeV ) = 0.986 ± 0.013 GeV and m b ( m b ) = 3.610 ± 0.016 GeV . Furthermore, fairly stringent predictions for the Higgs decay rate into photons and gluons are obtained, which will be interesting in increasingly precise experiments.