On the difference between the pole and the MSbar masses of the top quark at the electroweak scale

Abstract: We argue that for a Higgs boson mass M_H ~125 GeV, as suggested by recent Higgs searches at the LHC, the inclusion of electroweak radiative corrections in the relationship between the pole and MS-bar masses of the top quark reduces the difference to about 1 GeV. This is relevant for the scheme dependence of electroweak observables, such as the rho parameter, as well as for the extraction of the top quark mass from experimental data. In fact, the value currently extracted by reconstructing the invariant mass of the top quark decay products is expected to be close to the pole mass, while the analysis of the total cross section of top quark pair production yields a clean determination of the MS-bar mass.