Simple Approach to Renormalize the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa Matrix

We present an on-shell scheme to renormalize the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. It is based on a novel procedure to separate the external-leg mixing corrections into gauge-independent self-mass and gauge-dependent wave-function renormalization contributions, and to implement the on-shell renormalization of the former with non-diagonal mass counterterm matrices. Diagonalization of the complete mass matrix leads to an explicit CKM counterterm matrix, which automatically satisfies all the following important properties: it is gauge independent, preserves unitarity, and leads to renormalized amplitudes that are non-singular in the limit in which any two fermions become mass degenerate.