INTEGRATING OUT THE STANDARD HIGGS FIELD IN THE PATH-INTEGRAL

We integrate out the Higgs boson in the electroweak standard model at one loop and construct a low-energy effective Lagrangian assuming that the Higgs mass is much larger than the gauge-boson masses. Instead of applying diagrammatical techniques, we integrate out the Higgs boson directly in the path integral, which turns out to be much simpler. By using the background-field method and the Stueckelberg formalism, we d irectly find a manifestly gauge-invariant result. The heavy-Higgs effe cts on fermionic couplings are derived, too. At one loop the log M(H) terms of the heavy-Higgs limit of the electroweak standard model coinc ide with the UV-divergent terms in the gauged non-linear sigma-model, but vertex functions differ in addition by finite constant terms. Fina lly, the leading Higgs effects to some physical processes are calculat ed from the effective Lagrangian.