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# Higgs-boson production associated with a bottom quark at hadron colliders with SUSY-QCD corrections

## I Introduction

Searching for the Higgs boson is the most important task for the Fermilab Tevatron collider and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Among various Higgs production mechanisms, those induced by the bottom quark Yukawa coupling are particularly important because in some extensions of the Standard Model (SM) such a coupling could be considerably enhanced and thus the production rates can be much larger than the SM predictions. The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) serve as a good example of such extensions, where the coupling of the lightest $`CP`$-even Higgs boson (denoted by $`h`$) to the bottom quark is proportional to $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$  and thus can be significantly enhanced by large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$.

In the production channels of the Higgs boson via its coupling to the bottom quark , the process $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$ via $`bgbh`$ was recently emphasized in Ref.. The advantage of this process over the production via $`b\overline{b}h`$ , the dominant production channel via the bottom quark Yukawa coupling, is that the final bottom quark can be used to reduce backgrounds and to identify the Higgs boson production mechanism . And compared with the production via $`gg,q\overline{q}hb\overline{b}`$ , the production rate of $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$ is one order of magnitude larger. So the production $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$ may be a crucial channel for testing the bottom quark Yukawa coupling.

If the MSSM is indeed chosen by Nature, then the prediction of the cross section for the production $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$  must be renewed with the inclusion of SUSY quantum corrections because, like the process of the charged Higgs boson production $`pp(p\overline{p})tH^{}+X`$  and the relevant Higgs decays, the SUSY quantum corrections to this process may be quite large. In this work we study the one-loop SUSY-QCD corrections to this process, which is believed to be the dominant part in the SUSY corrections.

It is well known that the low-energy observables in the MSSM will recover their corresponding SM predictions when all sparticles as well as $`M_A`$ (the mass of the CP-odd neutral Higgs boson) take their heavy limits. If only some of the masses take their heavy limits, e.g., all sparticles are heavy but $`M_A`$ is light, then large remnant effects of SUSY may be left over in the physical observables of the Higgs sector. The study of these remnant effects will serve as an important probe for those heavy SUSY particles . Such kind of study will be performed for the process $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$ in this work. After deriving the SUSY-QCD corrections to this process, we will examine the behavior of the corrections in the limit of heavy SUSY masses. When $`M_A`$ is light and the sparticles take their heavy limits, we find the large remnant effects left over by the SUSY-QCD in such a Higgs production process.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section II we present our strategy for the calculation of the one-loop SUSY-QCD corrections to the process $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$. In Section III, we scan the parameter space of the MSSM to estimate the size of the SUSY-QCD corrections. In Section IV, we study the behaviors of these corrections in the limit of heavy SUSY masses. The conclusion is given in Section V and the detailed formula obtained in our calculations are presented in the Appendix.

## II Calculations

At high energy hadron colliders, the incoming $`b`$-quark is generated from gluons splitting into nearly collinear $`b\overline{b}`$ pairs. When one member of the pair initiates a hard-scattering subprocess, its partner tends to remain at low $`p_T`$ and to become part of the beam remnant. Hence the final state typically has no high-$`p_T`$ $`b`$-quarks. When the scale of the hard scattering is large compared with the $`b`$-quark mass, the $`b`$-quark is regarded as part of the proton sea. However, unlike the light quark sea, the $`b`$-quark sea is perturbatively calculable. If the scale of the hard scattering is $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ (for the scale we use $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ to distinguish from the SUSY parameter $`\mu `$), the $`b`$-quark distribution function $`b(x,\stackrel{~}{\mu })`$ is intrinsically of order $`\alpha _s(\stackrel{~}{\mu })\mathrm{log}(\stackrel{~}{\mu }/m_b)`$. As $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ approaches $`m_b`$ from above, $`b(x,\stackrel{~}{\mu })0`$; while as $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ becoming asymptotically large, $`\alpha _s(\stackrel{~}{\mu })\mathrm{log}(\stackrel{~}{\mu }/m_b)`$ approaches order of unity and one needs to sum terms of order $`\alpha _s^n(\stackrel{~}{\mu })\mathrm{log}^n(\stackrel{~}{\mu }/m_b)`$ into the $`b`$-quark distribution function to yield a well-behaved perturbation expansion in terms of $`\alpha _s`$ . In this case, the $`b`$-quark distribution function becomes of the same order as the light partons. The main uncertainty of $`b`$-quark distribution function comes from that of gluon distribution function which is about $`10\%`$ .

The subprocess $`gbbh`$ occurs through both $`s`$-channel and $`t`$-channel shown in Fig. 1$`(a,b)`$. The spin- and color-averaged differential cross section at tree-level is given by

$$\frac{d\widehat{\sigma }^0}{d\widehat{t}}=\frac{\alpha _s(\stackrel{~}{\mu })}{24}\left(\frac{gm_b(\stackrel{~}{\mu })}{2m_W}\right)^2\left(\frac{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta }\right)^2\frac{1}{\widehat{s}^2}\frac{m_h^4+(\widehat{s}+\widehat{t}m_h^2)^2}{\widehat{s}\widehat{t}},$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{s}`$ and $`\widehat{t}`$ are the usual Mandelstam variables, $`\alpha _s(\stackrel{~}{\mu })`$ is the running strong coupling, and $`m_b(\stackrel{~}{\mu })`$ is the running bottom quark mass. $`\alpha `$ represents the mixing angel between the two CP-even Higgs boson eigenstates and $`\beta `$ is defined by $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =v_2/v_1`$ with $`v_{1,2}`$ denoting the vacuum expectation values of the two Higgs doublets. In Eq.(1), we use the $`\overline{MS}`$ running mass of the $`b`$-quark rather than the pole mass to take into account large QCD logarithm corrections to the vertex $`hb\overline{b}`$ . The SM prediction of the cross section is recovered when setting $`|\mathrm{sin}\alpha /\mathrm{cos}\beta |=1`$. Throughout the calculations we neglect the $`b`$-quark mass except in the $`b`$-quark Yukawa couplings.

The one-loop Feynman diagrams of SUSY-QCD corrections are shown in Fig. 1(c-r). In our calculations we use dimensional regularization to control the ultraviolet divergences in the virtual loop corrections. For the renormalization of strong coupling constant $`g_s`$, we employ the $`\overline{MS}`$ scheme . As to the $`hb\overline{b}`$ Yukawa coupling, at one loop level to $`𝒪(\alpha _s)`$ it is given by

$`\overline{g}_{hbb}=g_{hbb}+\delta g_{hbb}^{QCD}+\delta g_{hbb}^{SQCD},`$ (2)
where $`\overline{g}_{hbb}`$ denotes the one-loop coupling, $`g_{hbb}`$ is tree-level coupling, $`\delta g_{hbb}^{QCD}`$ is the radiative correction from pure QCD , and $`\delta g_{hbb}^{SQCD}`$ is the one-loop SUSY-QCD contribution . In determining $`\delta g_{hbb}^{QCD}+\delta g_{hbb}^{SQCD}`$, one needs the counter-term of the vertex $`hb\overline{b}`$, whose general from is given by $`g_{hbb}(\frac{\delta m_b^{QCD}}{m_b}+\frac{\delta m_b^{SQCD}}{m_b})`$ with $`\delta m_b`$ being the counter-term of the $`b`$-quark mass defined by $`m_b^0=m_b+\delta m_b`$ ($`m_b^0`$ is the bare mass). $`\delta m_b`$ is determined by requiring $`m_b`$ to be the pole of the one-loop corrected $`b`$-quark propagator . One major difference between $`\delta g_{hbb}^{QCD}`$ and $`\delta g_{hbb}^{SQCD}`$ is that the former contains large logarithms $`\alpha _s\mathrm{log}\frac{\stackrel{~}{\mu }}{m_b}`$ of $`𝒪(1)`$ and thus one needs to introduce $`\overline{MS}`$ running mass $`m_b(\stackrel{~}{\mu })`$ to absorb leading logarithms $`\alpha _s^n\mathrm{log}(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\mu }}{m_b})^n`$ . An extensive discussion about this issue in the MSSM was provided in Ref..

The one-loop SUSY-QCD contribution to the amplitude of $`gbbh`$ can be written as

$`\delta M`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{ig_s^3T^a}{16\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{gm_b}{2m_W}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}\overline{u}(p_2)(C_1\gamma ^\mu P_L+C_2\gamma ^\mu P_R+C_3\gamma ^\mu \mathit{}P_L+C_4\gamma ^\mu \mathit{}P_R+C_5p_1^\mu P_L+C_6p_1^\mu P_R`$ (4)
$`+C_7p_1^\mu \mathit{}P_L+C_8p_1^\mu \mathit{}P_R+C_9p_2^\mu P_L+C_{10}p_2^\mu P_R+C_{11}p_2^\mu \mathit{}P_L+C_{12}p_2^\mu \mathit{}P_R)u(p_1)ϵ_\mu (k),`$
where $`P_{L,R}(1\gamma _5)/2`$, $`T^a\lambda ^a/2`$ with $`\lambda ^a`$ being the Gell-Mann matrices, and $`k`$, $`p_1`$ and $`p_2`$ are the momentum of the incoming gluon, incoming $`b`$-quark and the outgoing $`b`$-quark, respectively. $`g_s`$ and $`m_b`$ should be understood as the running ones in Eq.(1). The coefficients $`C_i`$ arise from the loops and are given explicitly in Appendix A. We have checked that all the ultraviolet divergences canceled as a result of renormalizability of the MSSM.

The differential cross section of $`gbbh`$ with one-loop SUSY-QCD corrections is given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\widehat{\sigma }}{d\widehat{t}}}={\displaystyle \frac{d\widehat{\sigma }^0}{d\widehat{t}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{d(\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{\sigma })}{d\widehat{t}}},`$ (5)
where the first term is the tree-level result given in Eq.(1) and the second term is the one-loop SUSY-QCD corrections given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d(\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{\sigma })}{d\widehat{t}}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{48}}{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{gm_b}{2m_W}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\widehat{s}^2}}`$ (7)
$`\times \left[2(C_3+C_4)m_h^2+(C_5+C_6){\displaystyle \frac{m_h^2(\widehat{s}+\widehat{t}m_h^2)}{\widehat{t}}}+(C_9+C_{10}){\displaystyle \frac{(\widehat{s}+\widehat{t}m_h^2)^2}{\widehat{s}}}\right].`$
The cross section of $`gbbh`$ is then given by

$$\widehat{\sigma }(\widehat{s})=_{\widehat{t}_{min}}^{\widehat{t}_{max}}d\widehat{t}\frac{d\widehat{\sigma }}{d\widehat{t}},$$
(8)
where $`\widehat{t}_{max}=0`$ and $`\widehat{t}_{min}=\widehat{s}+m_h^2`$ with $`m_h`$ denoting the Higgs mass. In order to avoid collinear divergence in Eq.(8) and to enable the outgoing $`b`$-jet to be tagged by silicon vertex detector at the Tevatron and the LHC , we require the transverse momentum of the outgoing $`b`$-jet to be larger than $`15`$ GeV and apply a rapidity cut $`|\eta _b|<2.5`$ for the LHC and $`|\eta _b|<2.0`$ for the Tevatron.

The total hadronic cross section for $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$ can be obtained by folding the subprocess cross section $`\widehat{\sigma }`$ with the parton luminosity

$$\sigma (s)=_{\tau _0}^1𝑑\tau \frac{dL}{d\tau }\widehat{\sigma }(\widehat{s}=s\tau ),$$
(9)
where $`\tau _0=m_h^2/s`$ and $`s`$ denotes the $`pp(p\overline{p})`$ squared center-of-mass energy. $`dL/d\tau `$ is the parton luminosity given by

$$\frac{dL}{d\tau }=_\tau ^1\frac{dx}{x}[f_g^p(x,Q)f_b^p(\tau /x,Q)+(gb)],$$
(10)
where $`f_b^p`$ and $`f_g^p`$ are the $`b`$-quark and gluon distribution functions in a proton, respectively. In our numerical calculations, we used the CTEQ5L parton distribution functions . We did not distinguish the factorization scale $`Q`$ and the renormalization scale $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$, and assumed $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }=Q=m_h`$. The scale dependence of our results will be briefly discussed in the proceeding section.

The process $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$ has been extensively studied  in the framework of the Standard Model. Its cross section is found to be at the order of $`1`$ fb for the Tevatron and $`100`$ fb for the LHC, and the next-leading-order (NLO) QCD correction can enhance the production rate by $`50\%60\%`$ for the Tevatron and $`20\%40\%`$ for the LHC , depending on the applied cuts and the Higgs boson mass. We will incorporate such QCD corrections in our calculations for the production rate $`\sigma /\sigma _{SM}`$.

## III Numerical results

In this section we will perform a scan over the SUSY parameter space to show the possible size of the SUSY-QCD corrections. Before performing numerical calculations, we take a look at the relevant parameters involved. For the SM parameters, we took $`m_W=80.448`$ GeV, $`m_Z=91.187`$ GeV, $`m_t=174.3`$ GeV, $`\overline{m}_b(\overline{m}_b)=4.2`$ GeV $`,\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W=0.223`$ and $`\alpha _s(m_Z)=0.118`$ . We used the one-loop QCD running $`\alpha _s(\stackrel{~}{\mu })`$ and $`m_b(\stackrel{~}{\mu })`$.

For the SUSY parameters, apart from gluino mass, the mass parameters of sbottoms are involved. The sbottom squared-mass matrix is

$$M_{\stackrel{~}{b}}^2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_L}^2& m_bX_b\\ m_bX_b& m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_R}^2\end{array}\right),$$
(11)
where

$`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_L}^2`$ $`=`$ $`m_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}^2+m_b^2+m_Z^2(I_3^bQ_b\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W)\mathrm{cos}(2\beta ),`$ (12)
$`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_R}^2`$ $`=`$ $`m_{\stackrel{~}{D}}^2+m_b^2+m_Z^2Q_b\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W\mathrm{cos}(2\beta ),`$ (13)
$`X_b`$ $`=`$ $`A_b\mu \mathrm{tan}\beta .`$ (14)
Here $`m_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}^2`$ and $`m_{\stackrel{~}{D}}^2`$ are soft-breaking mass terms for left-handed squark doublet $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$ and right-handed down squark $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$, respectively. $`A_b`$ is the coefficient of the trilinear term $`H_1\stackrel{~}{Q}\stackrel{~}{D}`$ in soft-breaking terms and $`\mu `$ the bilinear coupling of the two Higgs doublet in the superpotential. $`I_3^b=1/2`$ and $`Q_b=1/3`$ are the isospin and electric charge of the b-quark, respectively. This mass square matrix can be diagonalized by a unitary rotation

$`\left(\begin{array}{c}\stackrel{~}{b}_L\\ \stackrel{~}{b}_R\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\theta _b& \mathrm{sin}\theta _b\\ \mathrm{sin}\theta _b& \mathrm{cos}\theta _b\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}\stackrel{~}{b}_1\\ \stackrel{~}{b}_2\end{array}\right),`$ (21)
and consequently $`\theta _b`$ and the masses of physical sbottoms $`\stackrel{~}{b}_{1,2}`$ can be expressed as

$`\mathrm{tan}2\theta _b`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2m_bX_b}{(m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_L}^2m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_R}^2)}},`$ (22)
$`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1}^2`$ $`=`$ $`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_L}^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _b+2m_bX_b\mathrm{cos}\theta _b\mathrm{sin}\theta _b+m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_R}^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _b,`$ (23)
$`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2`$ $`=`$ $`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_L}^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _b2m_bX_b\mathrm{cos}\theta _b\mathrm{sin}\theta _b+m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_R}^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _b.`$ (24)
From Eqs.(1,7,8) we know that the cross section also depends on the Higgs mass, $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, which can be determined at tree level by $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and the CP-odd Higgs mass $`M_A`$ . Noticing the fact that both the mass and the mixing angle receive large radiative corrections when the SUSY scale is high above $`m_t`$ , we used the loop-corrected relations of Higgs masses and mixing angle  in the computation of cross section. In our calculation, we used the program SUBHPOLE2 , where two-loop leading-log effects of the MSSM are incorporated in the Higgs masses and the mixing angel, to generate $`m_h`$ and $`\alpha `$ needed for our computation. The input parameters for this program are the mass parameters in the top sqaurk and sbottom sector, and $`M_A`$, $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and the heavier chargino mass $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }}`$.

We found that the usage of the loop-corrected relations of Higgs masses and mixing angle is indeed necessary. Comparing with the results obtained by using tree-level relations for Higgs masses and mixing angel, the size of SUSY-QCD corrections by using the loop-corrected relations is generally magnified from $`30\%`$ to $`200\%`$***The main reason for such an enhancement is that for a large SUSY scale, the dominant term of the SUSY-QCD correction is proportional to $`\mathrm{cot}\alpha +\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ (see for example, Eqs.(29, 32, 35, 38) in the proceeding section), whose value obtained by using the loop-corrected relations of the Higgs masses and the mixing angle is generally larger than that by using the tree-level relations.. We also checked that this conclusion is also valid for the SUSY-QCD correction to the Higgs partial width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(hb\overline{b})`$.

Now we know the relevant parameters are

$$m_{\stackrel{~}{Q}},m_{\stackrel{~}{U}},m_{\stackrel{~}{D}},A_{t,b},m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }},\mu ,M_A,\mathrm{tan}\beta ,$$
(25)
where $`M_{\stackrel{~}{U}}^2`$ is the soft-breaking mass term for right-handed top-squark and $`A_t`$ the coefficient of the soft-breaking trilinear term $`H_2\stackrel{~}{Q}\stackrel{~}{U}`$. To show the main features of SUSY effects in $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$, we performed a scan over this ten-dimensional parameter space. In our scan we make no assumptions about the relations among these parameters to keep our result model-independent, but restrict the parameters with mass dimension to be less than $`2`$ TeV. In addition, we consider the following experimental constraints:

* $`\mu >0`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ in the range $`5\mathrm{tan}\beta 50`$, which seems to be favored by the muon $`g2`$ measurement .
* The LEP and CDF lower mass bounds on Higgs, gluino, stop, sbottom and chargino

$`m_h114GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_1}86.4GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1}75.0GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}190GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }}^{light}67.7GeV,`$ (26)

where $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }}^{light}`$ is the mass of the lighter chargino.

It would be interesting to first scan over the allowed parameter space to figure out how large the production rate is enhanced in the MSSM. In Fig.2 we present the tree-level cross section relative to the SM prediction with the same Higgs mass. This ratio is independent of collider energy, but is dependent on the SUSY mass parameters since we use the loop-corrected relations of the Higgs masses and the mixing angle (see the second paragraph of Sect. II) . From Fig.2 one sees that the production rate in the MSSM can be significant larger than the SM prediction for a light $`M_A`$; while for a heavy $`M_A`$ the MSSM prediction approaches to the SM value. This character was first noticed in  and, as a result of this character, distinguishing the lightest MSSM Higgs boson from the SM Higgs boson in the large $`M_A`$ limit will be very difficult. When SUSY-QCD corrections are added, this character remains unchanged for heavy sbottoms(see following discussions). From Fig.2 one also finds that there exists the possibility (although very rare) that the MSSM cross section is suppressed to be below the SM value . In this case, the SUSY-QCD corrections will play a more important role in Higgs phenomenology at colliders .

Now let us scan over the allowed parameter space to show the possible size of the SUSY-QCD corrections relative to the tree-level value. In our numerical evaluation, we found the relative correction is insensitive to collider energy. The difference of the results between the LHC and the Tevatron is at the level of parts per mill. In Fig.3 we present the SUSY-QCD corrections to the cross section.

Fig.3 manifests three features of SUSY-QCD corrections for large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. The first one is that the correction size is enhanced by $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and thus can be quite large. The second one is that for $`M_A`$ lighter than $`500`$ GeV, the correction tends to be negative. The third one is that for large $`M_A`$, the correction may be positive and the maximum value seems to be independent of the value of $`M_A`$. These features can be explained as follows.

For the correction size larger than $`2\%`$, the dominant contribution of the SUSY-QCD correction is from the loop corrections to the vertex $`hb\overline{b}`$ and the contribution of the box diagrams is much smaller for the parameters satisfying the constraints in the paragraph following Eq.(25) In the large limit of SUSY mass parameters discussed in the proceeding section, we have checked that, even for the correction size far smaller than $`1\%`$, the dominant contribution still comes from the corrections to the vertex $`hb\overline{b}`$.. As a result, the correction behaves like (which is similar to the SUSY-QCD correction to the vertex $`hb\overline{b}`$ in case of heavy sbottoms )

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma }{\sigma ^0}}C_1{\displaystyle \frac{M_{EW}^2}{M_A^2}}+C_2{\displaystyle \frac{M_{EW}^2}{M_{\stackrel{~}{b}}^2}},`$ (27)
where $`M_{EW}`$ and $`M_{\stackrel{~}{b}}`$ denote the electroweak scale and the typical mass of sbottoms, respectively. $`C_1`$ and $`C_2`$ are functions of $`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1}`$, $`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}`$, $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$, $`\mu `$ and $`A_b`$, but independent of $`M_A`$. It is found that in general $`C_1`$ is negative and $`C_2`$ is positive and either $`C_1`$ or both $`C_1`$ and $`C_2`$ are enhanced by large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. For a light $`M_A`$ compared with $`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}}`$, the first term of the RHS in Eq.(27) is dominant and hence the cross section tends to be negative. While for a large $`M_A`$ , the second term is dominant and the cross section tends to be positive. So the behavior of Eq.(27) can explain the features of Fig.3.

From Fig.3 we noticed that in some corners of parameter space the one-loop SUSY-QCD contributions to the cross section are comparable or even larger than the tree-level result and consequently, one must consider higher order corrections. In such cases, it is important to sum over the terms $`\alpha _s^n(\frac{\mu }{M_{SUSY}})^n`$ to all orders of perturbation theory by using an effective Lagrangian approach .

Next we study the dependence of the SUSY-QCD correction $`\delta \sigma /\sigma ^0`$ and the cross section normalized by the SM prediction, $`\sigma /\sigma _{SM}`$, on the mass of the produced Higgs boson, which can be directly compared with experiment results and hence is much informative. In such a study we assumed a common value ($`M_{SUSY}`$) for all input SUSY mass parameters and, considering the fact that $`m_h`$ is insensitive to $`M_A`$ for $`M_A>150GeV`$ , we fixed the value of $`M_A`$. Then through varying the value of $`M_{SUSY}`$, we obtain the different mass value of the Higgs boson.

The dependence on $`m_h`$ is illustrated in Fig.4 for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =50`$. (Note that $`m_h`$ can vary only in a small range since it is stringently upper bounded in the MSSM.) In this figure and also in the following figures showing $`\sigma /\sigma _{SM}`$, we also incorporated the conventional QCD corrections  into both the MSSM and the SM cross sections. As pointed out earlier, the SUSY-QCD correction $`\delta \sigma /\sigma ^0`$ is not sensitive to collider energy. The difference of the results between the LHC and the Tevatron is too small to be visible, as shown in the upper part of Fig.4. But for $`\sigma /\sigma _{SM}`$ the difference between the LHC and the Tevatron is visible since the QCD corrections are significantly different for these two colliders .

We also studied the dependence of the production rate on the renormalization scale $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$. (As pointed out earlier, we assume that the factorization scale is equal to the renormalization scale.) We found that such a scale dependence is significant in some parameter space. For example, for the LHC with $`M_A=300`$ GeV and $`m_h=120`$ GeV, the ratio $`\sigma (\stackrel{~}{\mu })/\sigma (m_h)`$ is $`0.93`$ for $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }=m_h/2`$ and $`1.03`$ for $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }=2m_h`$. Such an uncertainty is comparable with the uncertainty from the $`b`$-quark Yukawa coupling ($`\overline{m}_b(\overline{m}_b)=4.2\pm 0.2`$) and the partron distribution function (about $`10\%`$).

## IV Behaviours of SUSY-QCD corrections in decoupling limits

To study the behaviors of the SUSY-QCD correction in the large limit of SUSY mass parameters, we consider four typical cases as in Ref. where the decoupling property of SUSY-QCD correction to the coupling of $`hb\overline{b}`$ is analyzed. To qualitatively understand the feature of each case, we present the approximate formula in the limits, but in practical numerical calculations we use the complete one-loop expressions.

About the inputs of the SUSY parameters, there are several differences between our work and Ref.. The first one is that in  the tree-level relations for the Higgs masses and the mixing angle were used, but in our calculations we use the loop-corrected relations. As discussed earlier, using the loop-corrected relations leads to a significantly different correction. The second one is that in our analysis we considered the experimental bounds in Eq.(26). This will rule out some parameter space which have been considered in Ref.. The third one is that in cases B and D we also require $`A_{t,b}`$ to be large since large $`A_{t,b}`$ is favored by the Higgs mass bound.

(1) Case A: All SUSY mass parameters except $`M_A`$ are of the same size (collectively denoted by $`M_S`$) and tend to heavy, i.e.,

$`m_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}m_{\stackrel{~}{U}}m_{\stackrel{~}{D}}A_bA_tm_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\mu M_S.`$ (28)
In this case the SUSY-QCD correction behaves like

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma }{\sigma ^0}}{\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }}\left[(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha )\mathrm{cot}\alpha ({\displaystyle \frac{m_h^2}{12M_S^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{m_b^2\mathrm{tan}^2\beta }{2M_S^2}})+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tan}\beta }{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta )}{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z^2}{M_S^2}}\right],`$ (29)
where the first term in the RHS corresponds to the first term in Eq.(27)In the MSSM the tree-level relation for Higgs masses and mixing angle predicts the following relation: $`\mathrm{cot}\alpha =\mathrm{tan}\beta \frac{2m_Z^2}{M_A^2}\mathrm{tan}\beta \mathrm{cos}2\beta +O(\frac{m_Z^4}{M_A^4})`$ and at loop level, the gap between $`\mathrm{cot}\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is generally enlarged. and the rest corresponds to the second term in Eq.(27). The striking feature of this case is that for very large $`M_S`$, the correction approaches a nonzero constant, and this remnant effect of SUSY-QCD corrections is enhanced by large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. This feature is illustrated in Fig.5. From Fig.5 one also finds that the SUSY-QCD correction in this case is negative and sizable §§§If the correction is too sizable (say exceed 50%), higher order corrections are also important and need a proper treatment. for a light $`M_A`$ and a large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$.

In Fig.6 we show the loop corrected cross section normalized by the SM prediction. From this figure we see that for $`M_A`$ of several hundred GeV, although the tree-level cross section in the MSSM can be reduced by large SUSY-QCD corrections, an enhancement of several times over the SM prediction can still be expected due to the fact that the tree-level $`b`$-quark Yukawa coupling in the MSSM is significantly enhanced by large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ for light $`M_A`$. This large enhancement shows a very weak dependence on $`M_S`$. So we can conclude that up to the next-leading order, a light $`M_A`$ is still able to make the MSSM cross section larger than the SM prediction.

(2) Case B: $`M_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}`$ $`M_{\stackrel{~}{U}}`$, $`M_{\stackrel{~}{D}}`$ and $`A_{t,b}`$ (collectively denoted as $`M_S`$) is much larger than $`\mu `$, $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ and $`M_A`$ (collectively denoted as $`M`$ ), i.e.,

$`M_{\stackrel{~}{Q},\stackrel{~}{U},\stackrel{~}{D}}A_{t,b}M_Sm_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\mu M_AM.`$ (30)
In this case the SUSY-QCD correction behaves as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma }{\sigma ^0}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }}[{\displaystyle \frac{2M^2}{M_S^2}}(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha ){\displaystyle \frac{m_h^2M^2}{6M_S^4}}({\displaystyle \frac{M_S}{M}}+\mathrm{cot}\alpha )`$ (32)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z^2}{2M_S^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta )}{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}(1({\displaystyle \frac{M_S}{M}}\mathrm{tan}\beta ){\displaystyle \frac{2M^2}{M_S^2}})].`$
From this expression we see that in the large $`M_S`$ limit, the SUSY-QCD corrections decouple rapidly as $`M^2/M_S^2`$ and the decoupling behavior is slowed down by large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. The characters of this case are shown in Fig.7. So we see that even with a fixed light $`M_A`$, the process still does not have remnant SUSY-QCD effects if the gluino mass and $`\mu `$ are also kept light.

(3) Case C: Only the gluino mass gets much larger than other SUSY parameters (collectively denoted as $`M_S`$) In this case the Higgs mass bound requires $`M_S`$ to be much larger than electroweak scale.:

$`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}M_{\stackrel{~}{Q},\stackrel{~}{U},\stackrel{~}{D}}A_{t,b}\mu M_AM_S.`$ (33)
In this case the SUSY-QCD correction behaves as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma }{\sigma ^0}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }}[{\displaystyle \frac{2M_S}{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}}(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha )(1\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2}{M_S^2}}){\displaystyle \frac{M_S\mathrm{cot}\alpha }{3M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_h^2}{M_S^2}}`$ (35)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{M_S\mathrm{tan}\beta }{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z^2}{M_S^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta )}{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{m_b^2\mathrm{tan}^2\beta \mathrm{cot}\alpha }{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}M_S}}].`$
The main character of this case is that as gluino mass gets large, the correction drops very slowly like $`\frac{1}{m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}\mathrm{log}\frac{m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2}{M_S^2}`$, which was also observed in Refs.. Again, like other cases, the size of the correction is enhanced by large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. In Fig.8 we show the dependence of the SUSY-QCD correction and $`\sigma /\sigma _{SM}`$ on the gluino mass. Note that in this case we found that $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =8`$ cannot satisfy the experimental bounds in Eq.(26) for $`M_S=600`$ GeV. In Fig.8 the correction size is significantly smaller than those in Case A and B. The reason is that here a large $`M_A`$ is chosen so that $`\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cos}\alpha `$ is suppressed (see footnote 3).

Let us explain the origin of the slowness of the decoupling in this case. Such slowness of the decoupling arises from the first term in Eq.(35), i.e., $`\frac{2\mu }{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha )\mathrm{log}\frac{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2}{M_{\stackrel{~}{q}}^2}`$ (note that the $`M_S`$ in the factor $`\frac{2M_S}{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}`$ is $`\mu `$ and the one in the logarithm is squark mass $`M_{\stackrel{~}{q}}`$). As $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ gets much larger than $`M_{\stackrel{~}{q}}`$ and $`\mu `$, $`\frac{2\mu }{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}`$ decreases but $`\mathrm{log}\frac{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2}{M_{\stackrel{~}{q}}^2}`$ increases. For the example shown in Fig.8, i.e., $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ is changing from 1 TeV to 5 TeV with fixed $`M_{\stackrel{~}{q}}=\mu =600`$ GeV, the factor $`\frac{2\mu }{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}`$ is decreased by $`1/5`$ but the factor $`\mathrm{log}\frac{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2}{M_{\stackrel{~}{q}}^2}`$ is increased by 4.16. Thus the slowness of the decoupling as gluino gets heavy is caused by the enlarged mass splitting between gluino and squark. Of course, since $`\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha `$ is proportional to $`\frac{2m_Z^2}{M_A^2}\mathrm{tan}\beta \mathrm{cos}2\beta `$ (see footnote 3), the contribution of the first term in Eq.(35) will be decoupled rapidly if $`M_A`$ gets large.

(4) Case D: One of the sbottoms and $`A_{t,b}`$ become heavy while other mass parameters (denoted as M) are fixed. We choose

$`M_{\stackrel{~}{D}}M_{\stackrel{~}{U}}A_{t,b}M_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\mu M_AMM_{EW}`$ (36)
or equally

$`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_2}A_{t,b}m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1}m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_1}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\mu MM_{EW},`$ (37)
where $`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_{1,2}}`$ and $`m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_{1,2}}`$ are the masses of bottom-squarks and top-squarks, respectively.

In this case the SUSY-QCD correction behaves as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma }{\sigma ^0}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2M^2}{m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2}}(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha )\left(1+\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{M^2}{m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z^2}{m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta )}{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}(1+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}s_W^2)({\displaystyle \frac{m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}}{m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1}}}\mathrm{tan}\beta )\right].`$ (38)
The main feature of this case is the correction decouples like $`\frac{1}{m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2}\mathrm{log}\frac{M^2}{m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2}`$ and this decoupling behavior is slowed down by large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Fig.9 shows the dependence of the correction and the cross section on $`m_{\stackrel{~}{D}}`$ ($`m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}`$). Comparing with the results in case B, we see that the correction size decrease more slowly as $`m_{\stackrel{~}{D}}`$ gets heavy.

From the above analyses we see that when $`M_A`$ is fixed and all other SUSY mass parameters get large, the SUSY-QCD lefts over some remnant effects in the Higgs production process $`ppbh+X`$ at the hadron colliders. Note that for the remnant effects to be left over, $`\mu `$ and gluino mass must be comparable with or larger than the masses of the sbottoms. The fundamental reason for such a behavior is that the couplings like $`h\stackrel{~}{b}_i\stackrel{~}{b}_j`$ are proportional to SUSY mass parameters.

We conclude this section by making a few remarks. Firstly, in our analysis we assumed $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},\mu >0`$ and, as a result, all four cases have negative values of the correction. In the anomaly-mediated SUSY breaking scenario, a negative $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ is predicted and in this case, the sign of the correction may be reversed. Secondly, it should be noted that in the calculations of such Higgs processes it is necessary to use the loop-corrected relations of the Higgs masses and the mixing angle since such relations can significantly affect the results. Thirdly, in case of a light $`M_A`$, although the SUSY-QCD corrections tend to reduce the cross section severely, the MSSM cross section can still be several times larger than the SM prediction. If the cross section of this process is measured in the future and found to be several times larger than the SM prediction, a light $`M_A`$ is favored.

## V Conclusion

In this work, we studied the one-loop SUSY-QCD quantum effects in the Higgs production $`pp(p\overline{p})bh+X`$ at the Tevatron and the LHC in the framework of the MSSM. We found that for a light $`M_A`$ and large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, the corrections can be quite sizable and cannot be neglected. We performed a detailed analysis on the behaviors of the corrections in the limits of heavy SUSY masses and found that when $`M_A`$ is fixed and all other SUSY mass parameters get large, the SUSY-QCD lefts over some remnant effects in the Higgs production process $`ppbh+X`$. Such remnant effects can be so sizable for a light $`M_A`$ that they might be observable in the future experiment. The exploration of such remnant effects is important for probing SUSY, especially in case that the sparticles are too heavy (above TeV) to be directly discovered in future experiments.

## Acknowledgment

We thank Tao Han for discussions. This work is supported in part by the Chinese Natural Science Foundation and by the US Department of Energy, Division of High Energy Physics under grant No. DE-FG02-91-ER4086.

## A Expressions of form factors

Before presenting the explicit form of $`C_i`$s, we define the following abbreviations:

$`\widehat{s}`$ $`=`$ $`(p_1+k)^2,\widehat{t}=(kp_2)^2,`$ (A1)
$`a_{1,2}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(\mathrm{sin}\theta _b\mathrm{cos}\theta _b),b_{1,2}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(\mathrm{cos}\theta _b\pm \mathrm{sin}\theta _b),`$ (A2)
$`A_I^L`$ $`=`$ $`(a_Ib_I)^2,A_I^R=(a_I+b_I)^2,A_I=a_I^2b_I^2,(I=1,2),`$ (A3)
$`A_{IJ}^L`$ $`=`$ $`a_Ia_J+b_Ib_J+a_Ib_J+b_Ia_J,A_{IJ}^R=a_Ia_J+b_Ib_Ja_Ib_Jb_Ia_J,`$ (A4)
$`B_{IJ}^L`$ $`=`$ $`a_Ia_Jb_Ib_Ja_Ib_J+b_Ia_J,B_{IJ}^R=a_Ia_Jb_Ib_J+a_Ib_Jb_Ia_J,`$ (A5)
$`cc_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z}{\mathrm{cos}\theta _W}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W\right)\mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta ),`$ (A6)
$`cc_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z}{\mathrm{cos}\theta _W}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W\mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta ),cc_3={\displaystyle \frac{m_b}{2m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }}(A_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha +\mu \mathrm{cos}\alpha ),`$ (A7)
$`Q_{11}`$ $`=`$ $`cc1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _b+cc2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _b+2cc3\mathrm{sin}\theta _b\mathrm{cos}\theta _b,`$ (A8)
$`Q_{12}`$ $`=`$ $`(cc2cc1)\mathrm{sin}\theta _b\mathrm{cos}\theta _b+cc3(\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _b\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _b),`$ (A9)
$`Q_{21}`$ $`=`$ $`(cc2cc1)\mathrm{sin}\theta _b\mathrm{cos}\theta _b+cc3(\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _b\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _b),`$ (A10)
$`Q_{22}`$ $`=`$ $`cc1\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _b+cc2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _b2cc3\mathrm{sin}\theta _b\mathrm{cos}\theta _b,`$ (A11)
$`B_i^I`$ $`=`$ $`B_i(p,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I})|_{p^2=m_b^2},`$ (A12)
$`B_i^{sI}`$ $`=`$ $`B_i(p,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I})|_{p^2=\widehat{s}},B_i^{tI}=B_i(p,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I})|_{p^2=\widehat{t}},`$ (A13)
$`C_{ij}^{aI}`$ $`=`$ $`C_{ij}(p_1,k,m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}),C_{ij}^{bI}=C_{ij}(p_1,k,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I}),`$ (A14)
$`C_{ij}^{cI}`$ $`=`$ $`C_{ij}(p_2,k,m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}),C_{ij}^{dI}=C_{ij}(p_2,k,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I}),`$ (A15)
$`C_{ij}^{eIJ}`$ $`=`$ $`C_{ij}(p_2,p_h,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_J}),C_{ij}^{fIJ}=C_{ij}(p_1,p_h,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_J},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I}),`$ (A16)
$`D_{ij}^{gIJ}`$ $`=`$ $`D_{ij}(p_1,k,p_h,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_J},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_J},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I}),D_{ij}^{hIJ}=D_{ij}(p_1,p_h,p_2,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_J},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}),`$ (A17)
$`D_{ij}^{kIJ}`$ $`=`$ $`D_{ij}(p_2,k,p_h,m_{\stackrel{~}{g}},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_I},m_{\stackrel{~}{b}_J}),`$ (A18)
where $`B_i`$, $`C_{ij}`$ and $`D_{ij}`$ are loop functions defined in .

After $`\frac{g_s^2}{16\pi ^2}`$ is factored out, the renormalization constant of b-quark can be expressed as

$`\delta Z_L`$ $`=`$ $`C_F{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}A_I^LB_1^I,\delta Z_R=C_F{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}A_I^RB_1^I,`$ (A19)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta m_b}{m_b}}`$ $`=`$ $`C_F{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}({\displaystyle \frac{m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}{m_b}}A_IB_0^I{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}A_I^LB_1^I{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}A_I^RB_1^I),`$ (A20)
where $`C_F=4/3`$. The contributions of the self-energy diagrams of $`b`$-quark propagator can be written as

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^s`$ $`=`$ $`C_F{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}A_I^LB_1^{sI}\delta Z_L,\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^t=C_F{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}A_I^LB_1^{tI}\delta Z_L,`$ (A21)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^s`$ $`=`$ $`C_F{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}A_I^RB_1^{sI}\delta Z_R,\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^t=C_F{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}A_I^RB_1^{tI}\delta Z_R.`$ (A22)
$`C_i`$ appeared in Eq.(7) are given by

$`C_3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}\{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(\widehat{s}C_{12}^{aI}+\widehat{s}C_{23}^{aI}+2C_{24}^{aI}1/2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{aI})A_I^L/\widehat{s}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}C_{24}^{bI}A_I^L/\widehat{s}`$ (A26)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(\widehat{t}C_{12}^{cI}+\widehat{t}C_{23}^{cI}+2C_{24}^{cI}1/2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{cI})A_I^R/\widehat{t}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}C_{24}^{dI}A_I^R/\widehat{t}\}`$
$`\delta Z_L/\widehat{s}\delta Z_R/\widehat{t}\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^s/\widehat{s}\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^t/\widehat{t}({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta Z_L+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta Z_R+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta m_b}{m_b}})({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\widehat{s}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\widehat{t}}})`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{2m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{m_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \underset{I,J=1}{\overset{2}{}}}Q_{IJ}\{{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{eIJ}B_{IJ}^L/\widehat{s}+{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{fIJ}B_{IJ}^L/\widehat{t}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}D_0^{hIJ}B_{IJ}^L\},`$
$`C_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}\{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(\widehat{s}C_{12}^{aI}+\widehat{s}C_{23}^{aI}+2C_{24}^{aI}1/2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{aI})A_I^R/\widehat{s}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}C_{24}^{bI}A_I^R/\widehat{s}`$ (A30)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(\widehat{t}C_{12}^{cI}+\widehat{t}C_{23}^{cI}+2C_{24}^{cI}1/2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{cI})A_I^L/\widehat{t}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}C_{24}^{dI}A_I^L/\widehat{t}\}`$
$`\delta Z_R/\widehat{s}\delta Z_L/\widehat{t}\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^s/\widehat{s}\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^t/\widehat{t}({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta Z_L+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta Z_R+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta m_b}{m_b}})({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\widehat{s}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\widehat{t}}})`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{2m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{m_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \underset{I,J=1}{\overset{2}{}}}Q_{IJ}\{{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{eIJ}B_{IJ}^R/\widehat{s}+{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{fIJ}B_{IJ}^R/\widehat{t}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}D_0^{hIJ}B_{IJ}^R\},`$
$`C_5`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}\{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(4C_{24}^{aI}+1+2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{aI})A_I^L/\widehat{s}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(\widehat{s}C_{12}^{bI}+\widehat{s}C_{23}^{bI}+2C_{24}^{bI})A_I^L/\widehat{s}\}`$ (A33)
$`+2\delta Z_L/\widehat{s}+2\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^s/\widehat{s}+(\delta Z_L+\delta Z_R+2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta m_b}{m_b}})/\widehat{s}+{\displaystyle \frac{2m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{m_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \underset{I,J=1}{\overset{2}{}}}Q_{IJ}\{{\displaystyle \frac{8}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{eIJ}B_{IJ}^L/\widehat{s}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_0^{gIJ}+D_{11}^{gIJ}D_{13}^{gIJ})B_{IJ}^L+3m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_{11}^{hIJ}D_{12}^{hIJ})B_{IJ}^L+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}D_{13}^kB_{IJ}^L\},`$
$`C_6`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}\{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(4C_{24}^{aI}+1+2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{aI})A_I^R/\widehat{s}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(\widehat{s}C_{12}^{bI}+\widehat{s}C_{23}^{bI}+2C_{24}^{bI})A_I^R/\widehat{s}\}`$ (A36)
$`+2\delta Z_R/\widehat{s}+2\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^s/\widehat{s}+(\delta Z_L+\delta Z_R+2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta m_b}{m_b}})/\widehat{s}+{\displaystyle \frac{2m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{m_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \underset{I,J=1}{\overset{2}{}}}Q_{IJ}\{{\displaystyle \frac{8}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{eIJ}B_{IJ}^R/\widehat{s}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_0^{gIJ}+D_{11}^{gIJ}D_{13}^{gIJ})B_{IJ}^R+3m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_{11}^{hIJ}D_{12}^{hIJ})B_{IJ}^R+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}D_{13}^kB_{IJ}^R\},`$
$`C_9`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}\{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(4C_{24}^{cI}+1+2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{cI})A_I^R/\widehat{t}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(\widehat{t}C_{12}^{dI}+\widehat{t}C_{23}^{dI}+2C_{24}^{dI})A_I^R/\widehat{t}\}`$ (A39)
$`+2\delta Z_R/\widehat{t}+2\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^t/\widehat{t}+(\delta Z_L+\delta Z_R+2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta m_b}{m_b}})/\widehat{t}+{\displaystyle \frac{2m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{m_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \underset{I,J=1}{\overset{2}{}}}Q_{IJ}\{{\displaystyle \frac{8}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{fIJ}B_{IJ}^L/\widehat{t}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}D_{13}^{gIJ}B_{IJ}^L+3m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_{12}^{hIJ}D_{13}^{hIJ})B_{IJ}^L+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_0^k+D_{11}^kD_{13}^k)B_{ij}^L\},`$
$`C_{10}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{I=1}{\overset{2}{}}}\{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}(4C_{24}^{cI}+1+2m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2C_0^{cI})A_I^L/\widehat{t}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(\widehat{t}C_{12}^{dI}+\widehat{t}C_{23}^{dI}+2C_{24}^{dI})A_I^L/\widehat{t}\}`$ (A42)
$`+2\delta Z_L/\widehat{t}+2\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^t/\widehat{t}+(\delta Z_L+\delta Z_R+2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta m_b}{m_b}})/\widehat{t}+{\displaystyle \frac{2m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{m_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }}{\displaystyle \underset{I,J=1}{\overset{2}{}}}Q_{IJ}\{{\displaystyle \frac{8}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}C_0^{fIJ}B_{IJ}^R/\widehat{t}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}D_{13}^{gIJ}B_{IJ}^R+3m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_{12}^{hIJ}D_{13}^{hIJ})B_{IJ}^R+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(D_0^k+D_{11}^kD_{13}^k)B_{ij}^R\}.`$
Since we have neglect the b-quark mass throughout this paper, $`C_{1,2,7,8,11,12}`$ are irrelevant to our result and we do not present their explicit forms here.


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# Virasoro operators in the continuous basis of string field theory

## 1 Introduction and summary

String field theory  is a non-perturbative, off-shell formulation of string theory. The basic entities of this theory are fields over the space of string configurations. These fields are multiplied using a non-commutative star product, defined by the gluing of the right half of one string to the left half of the other. The derivation operator on these fields, that appears in the kinetic term, is $`Q_{BRST}`$.

Gross and Jevicki  gave an explicit formulation of the star product in the (infinite dimensional) oscillator basis. They defined the star product by an interaction vertex, which is a squeezed state over a direct product of three Fock spaces. This form of the vertex implies that squeezed states form a subalgebra of the star product.

In  Rastelli Sen and Zwiebach diagonalized these matrices and found their spectrum. The eigenvectors of these matrices form a continuous basis whose eigenvalues are in the range $`\mathrm{}<\kappa <\mathrm{}`$. Working in this basis simplifies calculations involving the star product.

Calculating normalization of squeezed states in the continuous basis involves determinants of continuous matrices. If these matrices are diagonal $`X=X_\kappa \delta (\kappa \kappa ^{})`$, then the determinant has the form

$$detX=\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{tr}\mathrm{log}X\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(𝑑\kappa \delta (\kappa \kappa )\mathrm{log}X_\kappa \right).$$
(1)
A similar expression holds for matrices in the $`_{\kappa ^2}`$ subalgebra . The delta function is the spectral density $`\rho (\kappa )`$ of the continuous basis. This spectral density diverges, and in the level-truncation regularization its divergence is $`\kappa `$ independent and behaves as $`\rho ^L(\kappa )=\frac{\mathrm{log}L}{2\pi }`$. Because of this divergence, it seems that the determinant can only get the values $`0,1,\mathrm{}`$ depending on whether the integral $`𝑑\kappa \mathrm{log}X`$ is negative, zero or positive. But $`\rho (\kappa )`$ has a finite contribution $`\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )`$ which is $`\kappa `$ dependent. When the ghost sector contributions cancel these infinities, $`\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )`$ cannot be ignored, and the expression

$$\mathrm{exp}\left(𝑑\kappa \rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )\mathrm{log}X\right),$$

should be taken into account. Belov and Konechny calculated $`\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )`$ numerically in . We find the analytic expression

$$\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )=\frac{4\mathrm{log}(2)2\gamma \mathrm{\Psi }(\frac{i\kappa }{2})\mathrm{\Psi }(\frac{i\kappa }{2})}{4\pi },$$
(2)
where $`\gamma `$ is Euler’s constant, and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is the digamma (polygamma) function.

Another missing ingredient of the continuous basis is the form of the Virasoro generators. The Virasoro generators are used in string field theory to construct $`Q_{BRST}`$, from which the kinetic term around the perturbative vacuum is built. Other derivations built from the Virasoro generators can serve as kinetic terms as well . The Virasoro generators are also useful in the construction of surface states , and in particular of surface state projectors . In  it was noticed that the expression for $`L_0`$ in the continuous basis diverges. This is true for all the Virasoro generators. Nonetheless, we manage to find an analytic expression for them. For a single scalar field, $`L_0`$ is given by

$`L_0`$ $`=\alpha ^{}p_0^2+{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}na_n^{}a_n=\alpha ^{}p_0^2+{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}},`$ (3)
$`g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}nv_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa ^{}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa +\kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}{2}}\left(\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}+2i)+\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}2i)\right).`$
The use of complex arguments in the one dimensional delta function is somewhat unorthodox, but the definition of the delta function for complex arguments is essentially the same as for real arguments. We elaborate on the definition of the delta function and demonstrate its use in the body of the paper.

The complex delta functions hide the high divergence of $`L_0`$ in the continuous basis. They appear in all the Virasoro generators. The midpoint preserving reparameterization generators $`K_n=L_n(1)^nL_n`$ should have milder divergences , and indeed they do not contain complex delta functions.

This paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we fix our notations for the continuous basis and give a useful integral expression for the eigenvectors $`v_n^\kappa `$. In section 3 we calculate the finite part of the spectral density. In section 4 we introduce a useful operator, which we denote $`_\kappa `$, and elaborate on the definition and use of the one dimensional delta function with a complex argument. We use these tools in section 5 to calculate the Virasoro generators. Sections 4 and 5 are independent of section 3.

## 2 The continuous basis

In this section we summarize the properties of the continuous basis, and set our notations. In  the star algebra derivation $`K_1=L_1+L_1`$ was represented by a matrix over the oscillators basis $`[K_1,va]=(\mathrm{K}_1v)a`$ and its spectrum was found to be

$$\mathrm{K}_1v^\kappa =\kappa v^\kappa ,$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{}<\kappa <\mathrm{}`$ and $`v^\kappa `$ are the eigenvectors of the matrix $`\mathrm{K}_1`$. The generating function of these eigenvectors is

$$f_\kappa (z)\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{v_n^\kappa }{\sqrt{n}}z^n=\frac{1}{\kappa }\left(1e^{\kappa \mathrm{tan}^1z}\right).$$
(5)
This relation can be inverted to give

$$v_n^\kappa =\frac{\sqrt{n}}{2\pi i}\frac{f_\kappa (z)}{z^{n+1}}𝑑z.$$
(6)
Okuyama  found the orthogonality and completeness relations of the eigenvectors

$$\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}v_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa ^{}=𝒩(\kappa )\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}),_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d\kappa }{𝒩(\kappa )}v_n^\kappa v_m^\kappa =\delta _{n,m},$$
(7)
where the normalization is given by

$$𝒩(\kappa )=\frac{2}{\kappa }\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{2}\right).$$
(8)
The continuous basis creation and annihilation operators are given by

$$a_\kappa ^{}=\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{v_n^\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )}}a_n^{},a_\kappa =\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{v_n^\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )}}a_n,$$
(9)
where $`a_n`$ are the usual modes of the string. The inverse relations are

$$a_n^{}=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\kappa \frac{v_n^\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )}}a_\kappa ^{},a_n=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\kappa \frac{v_n^\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )}}a_\kappa .$$
(10)
With these relations the $`\kappa `$ oscillators satisfy the canonical commutation relations

$$[a_\kappa ,a_\kappa ^{}^{}]=\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}).$$
(11)
We end this section by giving an integral representation for $`v_n^\kappa `$  that is more useful then (6) in some calculations.

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill v_{2n1}^\kappa & =\frac{(1)^{n+1}\sqrt{2n1}}{\pi }𝒩(\kappa )_1^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\mathrm{cos}(\kappa \mathrm{coth}^1(x))}{x^{2n}}𝑑x\hfill \\ & =\frac{(1)^{n+1}\sqrt{2n1}}{\pi }𝒩(\kappa )_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\mathrm{cos}(\kappa u)\mathrm{tanh}^{2n2}(u)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)}𝑑u,\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
where we substituted $`x=\mathrm{coth}(u)`$ in the last step. The analogous expression for $`v_{2n}`$ reads

$`v_{2n}^\kappa `$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{(1)^n\sqrt{2n}}{\pi }}𝒩(\kappa ){\displaystyle _1^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(\kappa \mathrm{coth}^1(x))}{x^{2n+1}}}𝑑x`$ (13)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{(1)^n\sqrt{2n}}{\pi }}𝒩(\kappa ){\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(\kappa u)\mathrm{tanh}^{2n1}(u)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)}}𝑑u.`$
Collectively they can be written as

$$v_n^\kappa =\frac{i^{n1}\sqrt{n}}{2\pi }𝒩(\kappa )_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{e^{i\kappa u}\mathrm{tanh}^{n1}(u)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)}𝑑u.$$
(14)
These expressions will allow us to change the order of summation and integration in the calculations of the spectral density and the Virasoro generators.

## 3 The spectral density

The spectral density $`\rho (\kappa )`$ is needed for calculating traces and determinants of operators that are diagonal in the continuous basis. Ignoring for a moment the fact that the trace is base invariant, we can calculate

$$\text{tr}G=n\left|G\right|n=n|\kappa \kappa \left|G\right|\kappa ^{}\kappa ^{}|n.$$
(15)
Now, using the fact that $`G`$ is diagonal in the $`\kappa `$ basis

$$\kappa \left|G\right|\kappa ^{}=G_\kappa \delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}),$$
(16)
we get

$$\text{tr}G=n|\kappa \kappa |nG_\kappa =\rho (\kappa )G_\kappa ,$$
(17)
where we define the spectral density

$$\rho (\kappa )\kappa |nn|\kappa =\frac{1}{𝒩(\kappa )}\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}v_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa .$$
(18)
From the invariance of the trace $`\text{tr}G=\kappa \left|G\right|\kappa `$, it is obvious that $`\rho (\kappa )`$ diverges like $`\delta (0)`$. In  it was shown that the leading term in level truncation regularization is $`\rho ^L(\kappa )=\frac{\mathrm{log}L}{2\pi }`$, where $`L`$ denotes the level. This term is $`\kappa `$ independent. In  the finite, $`\kappa `$ dependent, contribution to the spectral density was defined as

$$\rho _{\text{fin}}^{2L}(\kappa )=\frac{1}{𝒩(\kappa )}\underset{n=1}{\overset{2L}{}}v_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa \frac{1}{2\pi }\underset{n=1}{\overset{L}{}}\frac{1}{n},$$
(19)
and evaluated numerically. In this section we obtain an analytical expression for this term

$$\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )=\underset{L\mathrm{}}{lim}\rho _{\text{fin}}^{2L}(\kappa ).$$
(20)
We begin by regularizing the two diverging sums on the r.h.s of (19) with powers of the variable $`z`$ to get

$$\rho _{\text{fin}}(z,\kappa )=\frac{1}{𝒩(\kappa )}\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left(v_{2n1}^\kappa v_{2n1}^\kappa z^n+v_{2n}^\kappa v_{2n}^\kappa z^n\right)\frac{1}{2\pi }\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{z^n}{n},$$
(21)
where $`|z|<1`$. The last sum gives

$$\frac{1}{2\pi }\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{z^n}{n}=\frac{1}{2\pi }\mathrm{log}(1z).$$
(22)
We evaluate the first sum by using eq. (12)

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \frac{1}{𝒩(\kappa )}& \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}v_{2n1}^\kappa v_{2n1}^\kappa z^n=\frac{2z^{\frac{3}{2}}}{𝒩(\kappa )}_z\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{v_{2n1}^\kappa v_{2n1}^\kappa }{2n1}z^{n\frac{1}{2}}\hfill \\ & =\frac{2𝒩(\kappa )z^{\frac{3}{2}}}{\pi ^2}_z_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑u𝑑v\frac{\sqrt{z}\mathrm{cos}(\kappa u)\mathrm{cos}(\kappa v)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)}\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(z\mathrm{tanh}^2(u)\mathrm{tanh}^2(v))^{n1}\hfill \\ & =\frac{2𝒩(\kappa )z^{\frac{3}{2}}}{\pi ^2}_z_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\sqrt{z}\mathrm{cos}(\kappa u)\mathrm{cos}(\kappa v)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)z\mathrm{sinh}^2(u)\mathrm{sinh}^2(v)}𝑑u𝑑v\hfill \\ & =\frac{z}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\mathrm{cos}(\kappa v)\mathrm{cos}(\kappa \mathrm{tanh}^1(\sqrt{z}\mathrm{tanh}(v))}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)z\mathrm{sinh}^2(v)}𝑑v.\hfill \end{array}$$
(23)
In the last step we replaced $`_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑u\mathrm{cos}(\kappa u)\mathrm{}`$ with $`\frac{1}{2}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑u\mathrm{exp}(i\kappa u)\mathrm{}`$ and evaluated the $`u`$ integral by closing the contour in the upper half plane for $`\kappa >0`$ (with analytic continuation for $`\kappa 0`$) picking up the residues at $`u=\frac{(2n1)\pi i}{2}\pm \mathrm{tanh}^1(\sqrt{z}\mathrm{tanh}(v))`$.

In a similar way we evaluate the second term on the r.h.s of (21)

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒩(\kappa )}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}`$ $`v_{2n}^\kappa v_{2n}^\kappa z^n={\displaystyle \frac{2z}{𝒩(\kappa )}}_z{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{v_{2n}^\kappa v_{2n}^\kappa }{2n}}z^n`$ (24)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi ^2}}𝒩(\kappa )z_z{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{z\mathrm{sin}(\kappa u)\mathrm{sin}(\kappa v)\mathrm{tanh}(u)\mathrm{tanh}(v)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)z\mathrm{sinh}^2(u)\mathrm{sinh}^2(v)}}𝑑u𝑑v`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{z}}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(\kappa v)\mathrm{sin}(\kappa \mathrm{tanh}^1(\sqrt{z}\mathrm{tanh}(v))}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)z\mathrm{sinh}^2(v)}}𝑑v,`$
where now, in addition to the residues at $`u=\frac{(2n1)\pi i}{2}\pm \mathrm{tanh}^1(\sqrt{z}\mathrm{tanh}(v))`$, there are also residues at $`u=\frac{(2n1)\pi i}{2}`$.

In the $`z1`$ limit we add the integrals in equations (23) and (24) and neglect terms that behave like $`(1z)\mathrm{log}(1z)`$ to get

$$\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )=\underset{z1}{lim}\frac{1}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\mathrm{cos}\left(\kappa \left(v\mathrm{tanh}^1(\sqrt{z}\mathrm{tanh}(v))\right)\right)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)z\mathrm{sinh}^2(v)}𝑑v+\frac{1}{2\pi }\mathrm{log}(1z).$$
(25)
To evaluate this integral we write $`\sqrt{z}=1ϵ`$, and drop terms which would become irrelevant in the limit

$`\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )=`$ $`\underset{ϵ0}{lim}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\kappa }{2}\mathrm{log}(1+\frac{ϵ}{2}e^{2v})\right)}{1+\frac{ϵ}{2}e^{2v}}}𝑑v+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}\mathrm{log}(2ϵ)\right)`$ (26)
$`=`$ $`\underset{ϵ0}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}\left({\displaystyle _{\frac{ϵ}{2}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\kappa \xi }{2}\right)}{e^\xi 1}}𝑑\xi +\mathrm{log}(2ϵ)\right),`$
where $`\xi =\mathrm{log}(1+\frac{ϵ}{2}e^{2v})`$. To get rid of the infinities in the limit we calculate

$$_\kappa \rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )=\frac{1}{4\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\xi \mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{\kappa \xi }{2}\right)}{e^\xi 1}𝑑\xi ,$$
(27)
and since $`\rho _{\text{fin}}(0)=\frac{\mathrm{log}(2)}{\pi }`$ (as can be seen from eq. (26) or from a direct calculation) we get

$$\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )=\frac{\mathrm{log}(2)}{\pi }+_0^\kappa (_\kappa \rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa ))𝑑\kappa =\frac{4\mathrm{log}(2)2\gamma \mathrm{\Psi }(\frac{i\kappa }{2})\mathrm{\Psi }(\frac{i\kappa }{2})}{4\pi },$$
(28)
where $`\gamma `$ is Euler’s constant, and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is the digamma (polygamma) function. This result agrees with the numerical estimates of .

## 4 Mathematical preliminary

In the next section we shall see that in order to calculate the Virasoro generators in the $`\kappa `$ basis, we need to introduce the differential operator $`_\kappa `$. This operator is a sum of two shift operators in the imaginary direction. We define and explain the use of this operator in 4.1.

We shall have to operate with $`_\kappa `$ on delta functions, generating delta functions with complex arguments, creatures that we usually do not encounter. Thus, in 4.2 we elaborate on the definition of these delta functions and demonstrate their use.

### 4.1 The operator $`_\kappa `$

Our task in this section is to find an operator $`_\kappa `$ which obeys

$$_\kappa (\kappa v_n^\kappa )=nv_n^\kappa .$$
(29)
Equivalently this operator should obey the relation

$$_\kappa \frac{\kappa v_n^\kappa }{\sqrt{n}}z^n=z_z\frac{v_n^\kappa }{\sqrt{n}}z^n.$$
(30)
Summing over $`n`$, and using the generating function (5), we get

$$_\kappa (1e^{\kappa u})=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{sin}(2u)e^{\kappa u},$$
(31)
where $`u=\mathrm{tan}(z)`$. We see that

$$_\kappa =\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{sin}(2_\kappa )$$
(32)
satisfies the above equation.

The operator $`_\kappa `$ is a sum of two shift operators

$$_\kappa f(\kappa )=\frac{\mathrm{exp}(2i_\kappa )\mathrm{exp}(2i_\kappa )}{4i}f(\kappa )=\frac{f(\kappa +2i)f(\kappa 2i)}{4i},$$
(33)
and as such is defined only for functions which can be Taylor expanded with convergence radius $`r>2`$. Since $`_\kappa `$ contains only odd powers of $`_\kappa `$ we get for functions with convergence radius $`r>2`$ on the real axis an integration by parts formula

$$_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}f(\kappa )_\kappa g(\kappa )𝑑\kappa =_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}g(\kappa )_\kappa f(\kappa )𝑑\kappa .$$
(34)
The case $`r=2`$ should be handled with care. We illustrate it with an example that will be used in section 5.

$$\mathrm{exp}(2i_\kappa )\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{}+2i)\pi }{4}\right)}=\frac{i}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)},$$
(35)
where $`\kappa ^{}\kappa `$. For $`\kappa ^{}=\kappa `$ the radius of convergence is $`r=2`$, and the above expression is undefined. To extract the singular part of it we write

$`\mathrm{exp}(2i_\kappa ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}`$ $`=\underset{ϵ0}{lim}\left(\mathrm{exp}((2ϵ)i_\kappa ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}\right)`$ (36)
$`=\underset{ϵ0}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)iϵ}}`$ $`=i𝒫{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}+\pi \delta \left(\mathrm{sinh}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}}\right)\right)`$
$`=i𝒫{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}+4\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}),`$
where $`𝒫`$ represents the principal value of the function. In a similar fashion

$$\mathrm{exp}(2i_\kappa )\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}=i𝒫\frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}+4\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}).$$
(37)
We can take the symmetric and antisymmetric parts of these shift operators and write

$`\mathrm{cos}(2_\kappa )\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}\right)`$ $`=4\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}),`$ (38)
$`\mathrm{sin}(2_\kappa )\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}\right)`$ $`=𝒫{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}.`$
The antisymmetric part is of importance because of (32). The importance of the symmetric part lies in the “trigonometric” identity

$$\mathrm{sin}(2_\kappa )(f(\kappa )g(\kappa ))=(\mathrm{sin}(2_\kappa )f(\kappa ))(\mathrm{cos}(2_\kappa )g(\kappa ))+(\mathrm{cos}(2_\kappa )f(\kappa ))(\mathrm{sin}(2_\kappa )g(\kappa )).$$
(39)
We shall expand the definition of $`_\kappa `$ to functions whose radius of convergence is $`r<2`$ at the end of the next subsection.

### 4.2 The one dimensional delta function with complex argument

In this subsection we present the properties of the complex delta function, as it will emerge when we shall operate with $`_\kappa `$ on $`\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{})`$ in the calculations of the Virasoro generators. Formally, $`_\kappa \delta (\kappa \kappa ^{})`$ is an infinite sum of delta function derivatives, but does this sum converge to a distribution? We demonstrate that this sum is an object very similar to a regular distribution.

So far, we defined the operation of $`_\kappa `$ only on functions with convergence radius $`r>2`$. However, for the delta function, there is no notion of convergence radius because it is a distribution. We consider the definition of the delta function as a “limit” of functions,

$$\delta (\kappa )=\underset{ϵ0}{lim}\delta _ϵ(\kappa ).$$
(40)
Different $`\delta _ϵ`$ sequences have different radii of convergence. While the sequence used in (36) has a zero radius, other sequences, such as the limit of gaussians,

$$\delta _ϵ(\kappa )=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi ϵ}}e^{\frac{\kappa ^2}{ϵ}},$$
(41)
are analytic in the whole complex plane. Henceforth, we define the delta function using a sequence of this type. We can now define

$$_\kappa \delta (\kappa \kappa ^{})=\underset{ϵ0}{lim}_\kappa \delta _ϵ(\kappa \kappa ^{})\frac{1}{4i}(\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}+2i)\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}+2i)).$$
(42)
The complex arguments of the delta functions may seem strange, but in fact integrations involving these delta functions are similar to the familiar case of a real argument. This can be seen using the behaviors at (real directed) infinity of $`\delta _ϵ`$ and contour arguments<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1Note that $`z0`$ does not imply $`\delta (z)=0`$. In fact getting expressions such as $`\delta (2i)`$ in a result would probably mean that a non-legitimate manipulation was performed on the way. Also note, that while $`\delta _ϵ(\kappa \kappa ^{}\pm 2i)`$ are complex, the combination $`_\kappa \delta _ϵ(\kappa \kappa ^{})`$ is a real function.. These contour arguments only apply when we convolute the delta function with an analytic function $`f(\kappa )`$ that has no poles on the way to the new contour of integration. Thus, the complex delta function acts as a distribution, when confined to this class of functions.

Suppose now that $`f(\kappa )`$ has simple poles $`\kappa _n`$ in the range $`0\mathrm{}(\kappa )2`$. To evaluate $`_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\delta (\kappa 2i)f(\kappa )𝑑\kappa `$, we displace the contour to the line $`\mathrm{}(\kappa )=2`$, and pick up the residues along the way. Poles for which $`0<\mathrm{}(\kappa _n)<2`$, contribute $`2\pi i\delta (\kappa _n2i)\text{res}_{\kappa _n}(f(\kappa ))`$, while poles for which $`\mathrm{}(\kappa _n)=2`$ contribute $`\pi i\delta (\kappa _n2i)\text{res}_{\kappa _n}(f(\kappa ))`$. The last case to consider is the case of integrating the principle part of poles located on the real line. In this case we again get a contribution of $`\pi i\delta (\kappa _n2i)\text{res}_{\kappa _n}(f(\kappa ))`$ to the integral. All in all

$`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}`$ $`\delta (\kappa 2i)𝒫f(\kappa )d\kappa `$ (43)
$`=f(2i)+2\pi i{\displaystyle \underset{0<\mathrm{}(\kappa _n)<2}{}}\text{res}_{\kappa _n}(f(\kappa ))\delta (\kappa _n2i)+\pi i{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}(\kappa _n)=0,2}{}}\text{res}_{\kappa _n}(f(\kappa ))\delta (\kappa _n2i).`$
Due to a change in the orientation of integration

$`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}`$ $`\delta (\kappa +2i)𝒫f(\kappa )d\kappa `$ (44)
$`=f(2i)2\pi i{\displaystyle \underset{2<\mathrm{}(\kappa _n)<0}{}}\text{res}_{\kappa _n}(f(\kappa ))\delta (\kappa _n+2i)\pi i{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}(\kappa _n)=2,0}{}}\text{res}_{\kappa _n}(f(\kappa ))\delta (\kappa _n+2i).`$
We see that unlike regular distributions, the convolution of these generalized distributions with analytic functions can result in generalized distributions, rather then functions. The incorporation of multiple poles is straightforward and adds terms with derivatives of the delta function, but we shall not need it here.

Finally we introduce a recipe for handling expressions such as $`_\kappa f(\kappa )`$, where $`f(\kappa )`$ has radius of convergence $`r<2`$

$$_\kappa f(\kappa )=_\kappa \delta (\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })f(\stackrel{~}{\kappa })𝑑\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_\kappa \delta (\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })f(\stackrel{~}{\kappa })𝑑\stackrel{~}{\kappa }.$$
(45)
This definition involves changing the order of integration with the limit (40). As we naturally think of this limit as being taken after all integrations were performed, we shall refer to the r.h.s of this equation as the definition of $`_\kappa f(\kappa )`$. For the case $`r>2`$ this definition coincides with (33).

## 5 The Virasoro generators in the $`\kappa `$ basis

In this section we obtain the form of the Virasoro generators in the $`\kappa `$ basis for a single scalar field. Since the expressions are cumbersome, we start in 5.1 by finding $`L_0`$, which is the simplest one. It is also the most useful one, in particular when working in the Siegel gauge. In subsection 5.2 we calculate $`L_{\pm 1}`$ and confirm the closure of the $`sl(2)`$ algebra directly. Next, we get the general expression for all the generators and obtain identities that follow from the Virasoro algebra. All of the above is done in the zero momentum sector for clarity. We conclude by giving the general expressions for the generators including the zero mode.

### 5.1 Calculating $`L_0`$

Formally, writing the Virasoro generator $`L_0`$ in the $`\kappa `$ basis involves a simple change of basis

$$L_0=\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}na_n^{}a_n=\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa nv_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa ^{}}{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}},$$
(46)
where we define<sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2 The matrix $`g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ will play the role of a contravariant metric in .

$$g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}nv_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa ^{}.$$
(47)
However, it was shown in  that this sum is highly divergent. Thus, $`g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ cannot be given by a regular function. We derive an analytic expression for it as a generalized distribution by acting on both sides of the completeness relation (7) with the $`_\kappa `$ operator

$`g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ $`=_\kappa (\kappa {\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}v_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa ^{})=_\kappa (\kappa 𝒩(\kappa )\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}))`$ (48)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{2}\right)}{2i}}(\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}+2i)\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}2i))`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa ^{}+\kappa )\pi }{4}\right)}{2}}(\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}+2i)+\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}2i)),`$
where in the last step we used the properties of the delta function in order to give a manifestly symmetric expression for $`g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$.

We conclude this subsection with a consistency check. Define the covariant metric by the following convergent sum

$$g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^0\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{v_n^\kappa v_n^\kappa ^{}}{n}.$$
(49)
By the completeness relation (7) and the definition of $`_\kappa `$ (29), $`g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^0`$ obeys the identity

$`_\kappa (\kappa g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^0)=𝒩(\kappa )\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}).`$ (50)
We evaluate this metric by the methods of  and obtain

$$g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^0=\frac{2\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{4}\right)\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{4}\right)}{\kappa \kappa ^{}\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}.$$
(51)
This expression can be used to verify eq. (50) directly

$`_\kappa (\kappa g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^0)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{4}\right)}{\kappa ^{}}}\left(\mathrm{sin}(2_\kappa )\mathrm{sinh}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\kappa \pi }{4}}\right)\right)\left(\mathrm{cos}(2_\kappa ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}\right)`$ (52)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{4\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{4}\right)\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{4}\right)\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{})}{\kappa ^{}}}=𝒩(\kappa )\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}),`$
where we used eq. (38),(39), and the fact that

$$\mathrm{cos}(2_\kappa )\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{4}\right)=0,\mathrm{sin}(2_\kappa )\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{4}\right)=\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{4}\right).$$
(53)
Using the complex delta function integration rules (43),(44), one can verify that the metrics obey

$$_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}{𝒩(\stackrel{~}{\kappa })}g_{\kappa ,\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}^0g_0^{\stackrel{~}{\kappa },\kappa ^{}}=𝒩(\kappa )\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}),$$
(54)
as expected.

### 5.2 Calculating $`L_{\pm 1}`$

We use similar methods to obtain the remaining $`sl(2)`$ generators. Actually, it is enough to find $`L_1`$, since $`L_1`$ can be obtained by hermitian conjugation. We write $`L_1`$ in the $`\kappa `$ basis

$`L_1`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\sqrt{n(n+1)}a_{n+1}^{}a_n`$ (55)
$`={\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}\sqrt{n(n+1)}v_n^\kappa v_{n+1}^\kappa ^{}={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}g_1^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}},`$
where

$$g_1^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\sqrt{n(n+1)}v_n^\kappa v_{n+1}^\kappa ^{}.$$
(56)
Since the sum does not converge, we define the well behaved expression<sup>3</sup><sup>3</sup>3Note that unlike $`g_0^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}},g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^0`$ which play the role of metrics in suitable spaces, $`g_1^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}},g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^1`$ have no such interpretation. In fact they are not even symmetric with respect to $`\kappa ,\kappa ^{}`$.

$$g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^1\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{n(n+1)}}v_n^\kappa v_{n+1}^\kappa ^{}.$$
(57)
We will get $`g_1^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ using

$$g_1^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}=_\kappa ^{}_\kappa (\kappa \kappa ^{}g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^1).$$
(58)
Substituting the integral expression for $`v_n^\kappa `$ (14) we obtain

$`g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^1`$ $`=i{\displaystyle \frac{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dudve^{i(\kappa u+\kappa ^{}v)}}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^{n1}\mathrm{tanh}^{n1}(u)\mathrm{tanh}^n(v)`$ (59)
$`=i{\displaystyle \frac{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dudve^{i(\kappa u+\kappa ^{}v)}\mathrm{tanh}(v)}{\mathrm{cosh}(u)\mathrm{cosh}(v)\mathrm{cosh}(u+v)}}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa }}{\displaystyle \frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{2}\right)}{2\kappa \kappa ^{}\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{4}\right)}}.`$
A direct calculation using (38),(39) gives

$$_\kappa (\kappa g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^1)=𝒫\frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{2}\right)}{\kappa ^{}\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \kappa ^{})\pi }{2}\right)}.$$
(60)
As this expression has zero radius of convergence for $`\kappa =\kappa ^{}`$, we use (45) and get

$`g_1^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ $`=_\kappa ^{}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\delta (\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\kappa ^{})𝒫{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\pi }{2}\right)}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })\pi }{2}\right)}}`$ (61)
$`={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\stackrel{~}{\kappa }𝒫{\displaystyle \frac{(\delta (\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\kappa ^{}2i)\delta (\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\kappa ^{}+2i))\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\pi }{2}\right)}{4i\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{(\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })\pi }{2}\right)}}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{2}\right)}{2}}(\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}+2i)+\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{}2i)+2\delta (\kappa \kappa ^{})),`$
where in the last step we used the integration rules (43),(44).

To verify that the $`sl(2)`$ algebra indeed holds, we write

$`[L_1,L_1]`$ $`={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa _1d\kappa _2d\kappa _3d\kappa _4\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa _1\pi }{2}\right)\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa _3\pi }{2}\right)}{4\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa _1)𝒩(\kappa _2)𝒩(\kappa _3)𝒩(\kappa _4)}}}[a_{\kappa _1}^{}a_{\kappa _2},a_{\kappa _4}^{}a_{\kappa _3}]`$ (62)
$`\times (\delta (\kappa _1\kappa _2+2i)+\delta (\kappa _1\kappa _22i)+2\delta (\kappa _1\kappa _2))`$
$`\times (\delta (\kappa _3\kappa _4+2i)+\delta (\kappa _3\kappa _42i)+2\delta (\kappa _3\kappa _4))`$
$`={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}d\stackrel{~}{\kappa }a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa }{4\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa \pi }{2}\right)\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{2}\right)\mathrm{sinh}^2\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\pi }{2}\right)}{𝒩(\stackrel{~}{\kappa })}}`$
$`\times (\delta (\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }+2i)+\delta (\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }2i)+2\delta (\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }))`$
$`\times (\delta (\kappa ^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }+2i)+\delta (\kappa ^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }2i)+2\delta (\kappa ^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }))=2L_0.`$
The derivation of the other commutation relations is similar.

### 5.3 General $`L_n`$

Our strategy should be familiar by now, with a minor change, the appearance of creation (annihilation) operators bilinears. We write

$`L_m`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{m1}{}}}\sqrt{n(mn)}a_n^{}a_{mn}^{}+{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\sqrt{n(n+m)}a_{n+m}^{}a_n`$ (63)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa ^{}}{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}h_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}+{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}g_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}},`$
$`L_m=L_m^{}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}h_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}+{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}a_\kappa ^{}^{}a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}}}g_m^{\kappa ^{},\kappa },`$
where

$`g_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\sqrt{n(n+m)}v_n^\kappa v_{n+m}^\kappa ^{},`$ (64)
$`h_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{m1}{}}}\sqrt{n(mn)}v_n^\kappa v_{mn}^\kappa ^{}.`$
We start from calculating

$`g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^m`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{n(n+m)}}}v_n^\kappa v_{n+m}^\kappa ^{}`$
$`=i^m{\displaystyle \frac{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dudve^{i(\kappa u+\kappa ^{}v)}}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(u)\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^{n1}\mathrm{tanh}^{n1}(u)\mathrm{tanh}^{n+m1}(v)`$
$`=i^m{\displaystyle \frac{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dudve^{i(\kappa u+\kappa ^{}v)}\mathrm{tanh}^m(v)}{\mathrm{cosh}(u)\mathrm{cosh}(v)\mathrm{cosh}(u+v)}}`$ (65)
$`=i^{m+1}{\displaystyle \frac{𝒩(\kappa ^{})}{2\pi \kappa }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑v{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}^{m1}(v)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)}}\left(e^{i(\kappa ^{}\kappa )v}e^{i\kappa ^{}v}\right).`$
We can now write

$`g_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}=_\kappa ^{}_\kappa (\kappa \kappa ^{}g_{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}^m)`$ $`=_\kappa ^{}_\kappa {\displaystyle \frac{i^{m+1}\kappa ^{}𝒩(\kappa ^{})}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑v{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}^{m1}(v)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(v)}}e^{i(\kappa ^{}\kappa )v}`$ (66)
$`=\kappa ^{}𝒩(\kappa ^{})_\kappa ^{}_\kappa {\displaystyle \frac{v_m^{\kappa ^{}\kappa }}{\sqrt{m}𝒩(\kappa ^{}\kappa )}},`$
where in the second equality we noticed that the $`\kappa `$ independent term drops under the action of the derivative. In the last equality we recognized the integral expression for $`v_n^\kappa `$ (14), and used the anticommutation relation

$$\{_\kappa ^{},\kappa ^{}𝒩(\kappa ^{})\}=0.$$
(67)
In order to continue we recall that $`v_m^{\kappa ^{}\kappa }`$ are polynomials with respect to $`\kappa ,\kappa ^{}`$, and thus have infinite radius of convergence. Next, we notice that $`_\kappa ^{}_\kappa `$ acts on a function of $`\kappa _{}\kappa ^{}\kappa `$. We define $`\kappa _+\kappa +\kappa ^{}`$, and get

$`g_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{2}\right)}{8}}(\mathrm{cos}(4_{})\mathrm{cos}(4_+)){\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _{}v_m^\kappa _{}}{\sqrt{m}\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa _{}\pi }{2}\right)}}`$ (68)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{2}\right)}{16}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\stackrel{~}{\kappa }(\delta (\kappa _{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }+4i)+\delta (\kappa _{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }4i)2\delta (\kappa _{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa })){\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }v_m^{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}}{\sqrt{m}\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\pi }{2}\right)}}`$
$`=\mathrm{sinh}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\kappa ^{}\pi }{2}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{q_m(\kappa _{})}{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{\kappa _{}\pi }{2}\right)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{i^m\delta (\kappa _{}2i)(i)^m\delta (\kappa _{}+2i)}{2i}}m\mathrm{sin}\left({\displaystyle \frac{m\pi }{2}}\right)\delta (\kappa _{})\right),`$
where we used

$$\frac{v_m^{\pm 2i}}{\sqrt{m}}=(i)^{m1},\frac{v_m^{\pm 4i}}{\sqrt{m}}=(i)^{m1}m,$$
(69)
and defined the polynomial

$$q_m(\kappa )\frac{(\kappa +4i)v_m^{\kappa +4i}+(\kappa 4i)v_m^{\kappa 4i}2\kappa v_m^\kappa }{16\sqrt{m}}=\frac{e^{\kappa \mathrm{tan}^1(z)}dz}{z^{m1}(1+z^2)^2}.$$
(70)
Finally, we find $`h_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}`$

$`h_m^{\kappa ,\kappa ^{}}=_\kappa ^{}_\kappa \left(\kappa \kappa ^{}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{m1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi i)^2\kappa \kappa ^{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dzdw}{z^{n+1}w^{mn+1}}e^{\kappa \mathrm{tan}^1(z)\kappa ^{}\mathrm{tan}^1(w)}}\right)`$
$`=_\kappa ^{}_\kappa {\displaystyle \frac{dzdw}{(2\pi i)^2}\left(\frac{1}{w^{m+1}}\left(\frac{1}{zw}\frac{1}{z}\right)+\frac{1}{z^{m+1}}\left(\frac{1}{wz}\frac{1}{w}\right)\right)e^{\kappa \mathrm{tan}^1(z)\kappa ^{}\mathrm{tan}^1(w)}}`$
$`=_\kappa ^{}_\kappa {\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _+v_m^{\kappa _+}}{\sqrt{m}}}=q_m(\kappa _+).`$ (71)
The Virasoro generators of a single scalar field obey the $`c=1`$ Virasoro algebra

$$[L_n,L_m]=(nm)L_{n+m}+\frac{n^3n}{12}\delta _{n+m}.$$
(72)
Substituting the form of the Virasoro generators in the continuous basis (63) in the algebra (72) gives the identities

$`(nm)g_{n+m}`$ $`=[g_n,g_m],`$ (73a)
$`(nm)h_{n+m}`$ $`=h_ng_m+(h_ng_m)^\mathrm{T}h_mg_n(h_mg_n)^\mathrm{T},`$ (73b)
$`\text{Tr}(h_mh_n)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\delta _{n,m}(n^3n),`$ (73c)
$`(n+m)g_{nm}`$ $`=g_ng_m^\mathrm{T}g_m^\mathrm{T}g_n+h_mh_n`$ $`nm,`$ (73d)
$`(n+m)h_{nm}`$ $`=g_mh_n+(g_mh_n)^\mathrm{T}`$ $`nm,`$ (73e)
$`0`$ $`=g_nh_m+(g_nh_m)^\mathrm{T}`$ $`nm.`$ (73f)
In these expressions matrix multiplication is assumed, and the summation of a continuous index $`\stackrel{~}{\kappa }`$, in the multiplication as well as in the trace, should be understood as integration $`\frac{d\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}{𝒩(\stackrel{~}{\kappa })}`$.

To demonstrate the formalism we give a direct proof of (73a) and (73c). In computing the commutators of $`g_m`$ we use its form in eq. (66) and the expression for $`v_m^\kappa `$ in (14)

$`[g_n,g_m]^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}`$ $`=\kappa ^{}𝒩(\kappa ^{})_\kappa _\kappa ^{}{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}{\sqrt{nm}}}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{v_n^{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\kappa }}{𝒩(\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })}}\right)_{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{v_m^{\kappa ^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}}{𝒩(\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\kappa ^{})}}\right)(nm)`$
$`=\kappa ^{}𝒩(\kappa ^{})_\kappa _\kappa ^{}_\kappa _\kappa ^{}{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}{\sqrt{nm}}}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }{\displaystyle \frac{v_n^{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\kappa }v_m^{\kappa ^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}}{𝒩(\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })𝒩(\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\kappa ^{})}}(nm)`$
$`=\kappa ^{}𝒩(\kappa ^{})_\kappa ^2_\kappa ^{}^2{\displaystyle \frac{i^{n+m1}}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle }du_u\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\kappa u}\mathrm{tanh}^{n1}u}{\mathrm{cos}^2u}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\kappa ^{}u}\mathrm{tanh}^{m1}u}{\mathrm{cos}^2u}}(nm)`$
$`=(nm)\kappa ^{}𝒩(\kappa ^{})_\kappa _\kappa ^{}{\displaystyle \frac{v_{n+m}^{\kappa ^{}\kappa }}{\sqrt{n+m}𝒩(\kappa \kappa ^{})}}=(nm)g_{n+m}^{\kappa \kappa ^{}},`$ (74)
where in the second step we used the symmetry property $`_{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}f(\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })=_\kappa f(\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa })`$ and in the third step we performed the integration with respect to $`\stackrel{~}{\kappa }`$. In the last step we acted with one of the $`_\kappa `$ operators and with one $`_\kappa ^{}`$.

For the identity (73c) we use generating function techniques. The r.h.s of the identity gives

$$\underset{n,m1}{}z^mw^n\frac{1}{6}\delta _{n,m}(n^3n)=\frac{z^2w^2}{(1zw)^4},$$
(75)
while for the l.h.s

$`{\displaystyle \underset{n,m1}{}}z^mw^n`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{h_n^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}h_m^{\kappa ^{}\kappa }}{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}𝑑\kappa 𝑑\kappa ^{}}`$ (76)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{z^2w^2}{(1+z^2)^2(1+w^2)^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\kappa d\kappa ^{}}{𝒩(\kappa )𝒩(\kappa ^{})}e^{(\kappa +\kappa ^{})(\mathrm{tan}^1z+\mathrm{tan}^1w)}}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{z^2w^2}{(1+z^2)^2(1+w^2)^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{cos}^2(\mathrm{tanh}^1z+\mathrm{tanh}^1w)}}\right)^2={\displaystyle \frac{z^2w^2}{(1zw)^4}},`$
where we used (5.3) to sum over $`n,m`$.

### 5.4 The zero mode

Adding the zero mode to the Virasoro generators is simple, as all we have to do is to substitute

$`L_n`$ $`L_n+\sqrt{n}a_n^{}\sqrt{2\alpha ^{}}p_0=L_n+\sqrt{2\alpha ^{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\kappa \frac{\sqrt{n}v_n^\kappa a_\kappa ^{}}{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )}}p_0},`$ (77)
$`L_n`$ $`L_n+\sqrt{n}a_n\sqrt{2\alpha ^{}}p_0=L_n+\sqrt{2\alpha ^{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\kappa \frac{\sqrt{n}v_n^\kappa a_\kappa }{\sqrt{𝒩(\kappa )}}p_0},`$
$`L_0`$ $`L_0+\alpha ^{}p_0^2.`$
There are new identities that follow from the Virasoro algebra (72)

$`(nm)(\sqrt{n+m}v_{n+m})`$ $`=g_m^\mathrm{T}(\sqrt{n}v_n)g_n^\mathrm{T}(\sqrt{m}v_m),`$ (78a)
$`0`$ $`=g_n(\sqrt{m}v_m)+h_m(\sqrt{n}v_n)`$ $`nm,`$ (78b)
$`(n+m)(\sqrt{nm}v_{nm})`$ $`=g_m(\sqrt{n}v_n)+h_n(\sqrt{m}v_m)`$ $`nm.`$ (78c)
This completes the derivation of the matter sector Virasoro generators.

## 6 Conclusions

In this paper we found the finite part of the spectral density and the form of the Virasoro generators in the continuous basis. We hope that it would help solve some of the withstanding problems of string field theory.

The most pretentious goal is to find an analytic solution to string field theory’s equation of motion $`Q_{BRST}\mathrm{\Psi }+\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }=0`$. One way to achieve this might be to follow the analytical methods of  in the continuous basis.

It would also be interesting to attempt to calculate string amplitudes analytically. An expression for general string amplitudes was given recently in . The advantage of this expression is that it involves determinants of infinite matrices, making the level truncation calculations much simpler. The matrices involved in this calculation are the Neumann coefficients, coming from the vertices, and the Virasoro operators, coming from the propagators. Using the spectroscopy of the Neumann coefficients, together with our results for the Virasoro operators and the spectral density in the continuous basis, could allow for analytic calculations of string amplitudes.

For performing these tasks some more work is in order. Regarding $`\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )`$ one still has to understand how to incorporate it in the equations, as there is a discrepancy between CFT results and calculations involving $`\rho _{\text{fin}}(\kappa )`$ . The analytical expression for the spectral density implies that this is not a numerical artifact. As for the Virasoro generators, the form of the ghost sector is needed. The expressions in the ghost sector resemble those of the matter sector . Thus, they can be calculated using the methods of this paper.

###### Acknowledgments.

We would like to thank Jacob Sonnenschein, Yaron Oz and Ofer Aharony for fruitful discussions. This work was supported in part by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research, and the Israel Science Foundation.