 Matching the QCD scale across a quark threshold

At a heavy-quark mass $m$, leading-order continuity gives ${\beta }_{-}\ln (m/{\Lambda }_{-})={\beta }_{+}\ln (m/{\Lambda }_{+})$. Therefore $\boxed{{\Lambda }_{+}=m({\Lambda }_{-}/m{)}^{{\beta }_{-}/{\beta }_{+}}}$. This is a change of the strong-coupling scale parametrization across a change of active flavour number, not a discontinuity of the matched QCD coupling. For four to five active flavours in $SU(3)$, ${\beta }_{-}=25/3$ and ${\beta }_{+}=23/3$, hence ${\Lambda }_5={\Lambda }_4(m_b/{\Lambda }_4{)}^{-2/23}$.