Mixed heavy-light matching in the Universal One-Loop Effective Action

Recently, a general result for evaluating the path integral at one loop was obtained in the form of the Universal One-Loop Effective Action. It may be used to derive effective field theory operators of dimensions up to six, by evaluating the traces of matrices in this expression, with the mass dependence encapsulated in the universal coefficients. Here we show that it can account for loops of mixed heavy-light particles in the matching procedure. Our prescription for computing these mixed contributions to the Wilson coefficients is conceptually simple. Moreover it has the advantage of maintaining the universal structure of the effective action, which we illustrate using the example of integrating out a heavy electroweak triplet scalar coupling to a light Higgs doublet. Finally we also identify new structures that were previously neglected in the universal results. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.