Strong IR Cancellation in Heavy Quarkonium and Precise Top Mass Determination

Abstract: Combining recent perturbative analyses on the static QCD potential and the quark pole mass, we find that, for the heavy quarkonium states $c\bar{c}$, $b\bar{b}$ and $t\bar{t}$, (1) ultra-soft (US) corrections in the binding energies are small, and (2) there is a stronger cancellation of IR contributions than what has been predicted by renormalon dominance hypothesis. By contrast, for a hypothetical heavy quarkonium system with a small number of active quark flavors ($n_l\approx 0$), we observe evidence that renormalon dominance holds accurately and that non-negligible contributions from US corrections exist. In addition, we examine contributions of renormalons at $u=- 1$. As an important consequence, we improve on a previous prediction for possible achievable accuracy of top quark $\overline{\rm MS}$--mass measurement at a future linear collider and estimate that in principle 20--30~MeV accuracy is reachable.