varepsilon'/varepsilon in the Standard Model at the Dawn of the 2020s

We reanalyse the ratio $\varepsilon'/\varepsilon$ in the Standard Model (SM) using most recent hadronic matrix elements from the RBC-UKQCD collaboration in combination with most important NNLO QCD corrections to electroweak penguin contributions and the isospin-breaking corrections. We illustrate the importance of the latter by using their latest estimate from chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) based on the $octet$ approximation for lowest-lying mesons and a very recent estimate in the $nonet$ scheme that takes into account the contribution of $\eta_0$. We find $(\varepsilon'/\varepsilon)^{(8)}_\text{SM} = (17.4 \pm 6.1) \times 10^{-4}$ and $(\varepsilon'/\varepsilon)^{(9)}_\text{SM} = (13.9 \pm 5.2) \times 10^{-4}$, respectively. Despite a very good agreement with the measured value $(\varepsilon'/\varepsilon)_\text{exp} = (16.6 \pm 2.3) \times 10^{-4}$, the large error in $(\varepsilon'/\varepsilon)_\text{SM}$ still leaves room for significant new physics (BSM) contributions to this ratio. We update the 2018 master formula for $(\varepsilon'/\varepsilon)_\text{BSM}$ valid in any extension beyond the SM without additional light degrees of freedom. We provide new values of the penguin parameters $B_6^{(1/2)}(\mu)$ and $B_8^{(3/2)}(\mu)$ at the $\mu$-scales used by the RBC-UKQCD collaboration and at lower scales $\mathcal{O}(1\,\text{GeV})$ used by ChPT and DQCD. We present semi-analytic formulae for $(\varepsilon'/\varepsilon)_\text{SM}$ in terms of these parameters and $\hat{\Omega}_\text{eff}$ that summarizes isospin-breaking corrections to this ratio. We stress the importance of lattice calculations of the $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_\text{em})$ contributions to the hadronic matrix elements necessary for the removal of renormalization scheme dependence at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_\text{em})$ in the present analyses of $\varepsilon'/\varepsilon$.