On the electroweak and gluonic corrections to the hadronic width of the Z boson

The electroweak corrections to the Z-boson hadronic width are presented in a simple analytical form for the width itself, Λ_h, for its ratio to the leptonic width, R_l = Λ_h/Λ_l, for the Λ_b/Λ_h ratio, and for the total width Λ_Z. The rational parametrization, advocated in our recent papers on leptonic decays, simplifies the analysis of the hadronic decays too. There are two main results of this analysis: (1) All electroweak precision measurements agree within 1 σ with the electroweak Born approximation if the gluon coupling constant . Thus the electroweak radiative corrections have not been observed experimentally. The unexpected smallness of electroweak radiative corrections is caused by the mutual cancellation of the large positive contribution of a heavy top quark and the large negative contribution of all other virtual particles. (2) With electroweak radiative corrections being taken into account, the value of extracted from the experimental value of Λ_Z differs by 3σ from that obtained from R_l, if m_t 200 GeV; they agree within 1σ if m_t 150 GeV. Thus a low upper limit on m_t can be obtained from hadronic decays of the Z-boson alone, even without data on its leptonic decays.