Non-decoupling, triviality and the ρ{variant} parameter

The dependence of the ρ{variant} parameter on the mass of the Higgs scalar and the top quark is computed non-perturbatively using the 1/NF expansion in the standard model. We find an explicit expression for the ρ{variant} parameter that requires the presence of a physical cutoff. This should come as no surprise since the theory is presumably trivial. By taking this cutoff into account, we find that the ρ{variant} parameter can take values only within a limited range and has finite ambiguities that are suppressed by inverse powers of the cutoff scale, the so called "scaling-violations". We find that large deviations from the perturbative results are possible, but only when the cutoff effects are also large. © 1994 Springer-Verlag.