Recurrence relations for three-loop prototypes of bubble diagrams with a mass Original Research Article

Recurrence relations derived via the Chetyrkin-Tkachov method of integration by parts are applied to reduce scalar three-loop bubble (vacuum) diagrams with a mass to a limited number of master integrals. The reduction is implemented as a package of computer programs for analytic evaluation in FORM. The algorithms are applicable to diagrams with any integer powers on the lines in an arbitrary dimension. A physical application is the evaluation of the three-loop QCD correction to the electroweak rho parameter.