Consistency Analysis in Renormalization-Scheme Dependence of Perturbative QCD Calculations

Abstract

We studied the renormalization-scheme (RS) dependence of perturbative QCD calculations, especially of the moments of structure functions, in the light of the consistency requirement of truncated perturbation theory. Our findings are that (i) higher order contributions are always important and non-negligible from a viewpoint of theoretical consistency, and that (ii) as far as we cannot find a “physical RS”, no reliable predictions of perturbative QCD might be obtained.