Data-driven evaluations of Euclidean windows to scrutinize hadronic vacuum polarization

In this paper, we discuss how windows in Euclidean time can be used to isolate the origin of potential conflicts between evaluations of the hadronic-vacuum-polarization (HVP) contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon in lattice QCD and from e+e−→hadrons cross-section data. We provide phenomenological comparison numbers evaluated from e+e−→hadrons data for the window quantities most commonly studied in lattice QCD, complete with the correlations among them. We discuss and evaluate modifications of window parameters that could be useful in dissecting the energy dependence of tensions in the HVP integral and emphasize that further optimizations require a precise knowledge of the full covariance matrix in lattice-QCD calculations as well.