Simple approach to renormalize the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix

We present an on-shell scheme to renormalize the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. It is based on a novel procedure to separate the external-leg mixing corrections into gauge-independent self-mass and gauge-dependent wave function renormalization contributions, and to implement the on-shell renormalization of the former with nondiagonal mass counterterm matrices. Diagonalization of the complete mass matrix leads to an explicit CKM counterterm matrix, which automatically satisfies all the following important properties: it is gauge independent, preserves unitarity, and leads to renormalized amplitudes that are nonsingular in the limit in which any two fermions become mass degenerate.