We extend the argument presented by Benincasa, Boucher-Veronneau, and Cachazo to show that graviton tree amplitudes are well behaved under large complex deformations of the momenta of a pair of like-helicity gravitons. This shows that BCFW recursion relations for gravity amplitudes can be constructed using such shifts, providing an alternative proof to the recent one by Arkani-Hamed and Kaplan. By using auxiliary recursion relations the cancellations which are hidden when using covariant Feynman diagrams become manifest.
Lecture notes on Poincaré-invariant scattering amplitudes and tree-level recursion relations in spinor-helicity formalism. We illustrate the non-perturbative constraints imposed over on-shell amplitudes by the Lorentz Little Group, and review how they completely fix the three-point amplitude involving either massless or massive particles. Then we present an introduction to tree-level BCFW recursion relations, and some applications for massless scattering, where the derived three-point amplitudes are employed.
We show that on-shell recursion relations hold for tree amplitudes in generic two derivative theories of multiple particle species and diverse spins. For example, in a gauge theory coupled to scalars and fermions, any amplitude with at least one gluon obeys a recursion relation. In (super)gravity coupled to scalars and fermions, the same holds for any amplitude with at least one graviton. This result pertains to a broad class of theories, including QCD, N=4 SYM, and N=8 supergravity.
We derive on-shell recursion relations for nonrelativistic effective field theories (EFTs) with enhanced soft limits. The recursion relations are illustrated through analytic calculation of tree-level scattering amplitudes in theories with a complex Schrödinger-type field, real scalar with linear dispersion relation, and real scalar with Lifshitz-type dispersion relation. Our results show that the landscape of gapless nonrelativistic EFTs with local $S$-matrix can be constrained by soft theorems and the consistency of the low-energy $S$-matrix similarly to massless relativistic EFTs.
This thesis describes some of the recent (and some less recent) developments in calculational techniques for scattering amplitudes in quantum field theory. The focus is on on-shell recursion relations in complex momenta and on the use of unitarity methods for loop calculations. In particular, on-shell recursion is related to the MHV rules for computing tree-level gauge amplitudes and used to extend the MHV rules to graviton scattering. Combinations of unitarity cut techniques and recursion are used to argue for the "No-Triangle Hypothesis" in N=8 supergravity which is related to its UV behavio…
Recursion relations are succinctly obtained for $(++... +)$ and $(-++... +)$ amplitudes in the context of the space-cone gauge in QCD. We rely on the helicity symmetry of the problems to dictate our choices of reference twistors and the momentum shifts to complexify the amplitudes. Of great importance is the power of gauge Lorentz invariance, which is enough to determine the soft factors in the latter cases.
Using only the Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten(BCFW) on-shell recursion relation we prove color-order reversed relation, $U(1)$-decoupling relation, Kleiss-Kuijf(KK) relation and Bern-Carrasco-Johansson(BCJ) relation for color-ordered gauge amplitude in the framework of S-matrix program without relying on Lagrangian description. Our derivation is the first pure field theory proof of the new discovered BCJ identity, which substantially reduces the color ordered basis from $(n-2)!$ to $(n-3)!$. Our proof gives also its physical interpretation as the mysterious bonus relation with ${1\over z^2}$ behav…
In this article, we use Ward identity to calculate tree and one loop level off shell amplitudes in pure Yang-Mills theory with a pair of external lines complexified. We explicitly prove Ward identity at tree and one loop level using Feynman rules, and then give recursion relations for the off shell amplitudes. We find that the cancellation details in the proof of Ward identity simplifies our derivation of the recursion relations. Then we calculate three and four point one loop off shell amplitudes as examples of our method.
We construct an off-shell extension of cubic interaction vertices between massless bosonic Higher Spin fields on a flat background which can be obtained from perturbative bosonic string theory. We demonstrate how to construct higher quartic interaction vertices using a simple particular example. We examine whether BCFW recursion relations for interacting Higher Spin theories are applicable. We argue that for several interesting examples such relations should exist, but consistency of the theories might require that we supplement Higher Spin field theories with extended and possibly non-local o…
The quantum effects encapsulated in loop corrections are crucial in quantum field theory for a wide variety of formal and phenomenological applications. In this article we propose and check a definition of the so-called single cut contributions needed to complete on-shell recursion relations for the integrand of scattering amplitudes in generic power-counting renormalisable theories at conjecturally any loop order. Our proposal meshes well with standard dimensional regularisation and applies in particular directly to much of the standard model of particle physics. Apart from a diagrammatic con…
This article provides an introduction to on-shell recursion relations for calculations of tree-level amplitudes. Starting with the basics, such as spinor notations and color decompositions, we expose analytic properties of gauge-boson amplitudes, BCFW-deformations, the large $z$-behavior of amplitudes, and on-shell recursion relations of gluons. We discuss further developments of on-shell recursion relations, including generalization to other quantum field theories, supersymmetric theories in particular, recursion relations for off-shell currents, recursion relation with nonzero boundary contr…
It is shown how tree-level multi-gluon helicity amplitudes with an arbitrary number of off-shell external gluons can be calculated via BCFW recursion. Compact expressions for helicity amplitudes for scattering processes of three and four gluons, with up to three of them off-shell, are presented. Also, maximum-helicity-violating configurations are identified for up to two off-shell gluons, and the expressions for their helicity amplitudes for an arbitrary number of on-shell gluons are derived.
In the application of on-shell recursion relation to string amplitudes, one challenge is the sum over infinite intermediate on-shell string states. In this note, we show how to sum these infinite states explicitly by including unphysical states to make complete Fock space.
We derive the first ever on-shell recursion relations for amplitudes in effective field theories. Based solely on factorization and the soft behavior of amplitudes, these recursion relations employ a new rescaling momentum shift to construct all tree-level scattering amplitudes in theories like the non- linear sigma model, Dirac-Born-Infeld theory, and the Galileon. Our results prove that all theories with enhanced soft behavior are on-shell constructible.
On-shell recursion relation has been recognized as a powerful tool for calculating tree level amplitudes in quantum field theory, but it doesn't work well when the residue of the deformed amplitude $\hat{A}(z)$ doesn't vanish at infinity of $z$. However, in such situation, we still can get the right amplitude by computing the boundary contribution explicitly. In arXiv:0801.2385, background field method was first used to analyze the boundary behaviors of amplitudes with two deformed external lines in different theories. The same method has also been generalized to calculate the explicit boundar…
We construct off-shell recursion relations for arbitrary loop-level scattering amplitudes beyond the conventional tree-level recursion relations for $ϕ^{4}$-theory and the Yang-Mills theory. We define a quantum perturbiner expansion that includes loop corrections from the quantum effective action formalism by identifying the external source. Our method clearly shows how the perturbiner expansion becomes an off-shell current generating function. Instead of using the classical equations of motion in the conventional perturbiner method, we exploit the Dyson-Schwinger equation to derive the quantu…
We prove that all open string theory disc amplitudes in a flat background obey Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) on-shell recursion relations, up to a possible reality condition on a kinematic invariant. Arguments that the same holds for tree level closed string amplitudes are given as well. Non-adjacent BCFW-shifts are related to adjacent shifts through monodromy relations for which we provide a novel CFT based derivation. All possible recursion relations are related by old-fashioned string duality. The field theory limit of the analysis for amplitudes involving gluons is explicitly shown to …
I study tachyon condensate perturbations to the action of the two dimensional string theory corresponding to the c=1 matrix model. These are shown to deform the action of the ground ring on the tachyon modules, confirming a conjecture of Witten. The ground ring structure is used to derive recursion relations which relate (N+1) and N tachyon bulk scattering amplitudes. These recursion relations allow one to compute all bulk amplitudes.
A field theoretical realization of topological gravity is discussed in the semirigid geometry context. In particular, its topological nature is given by the relation between deRham cohomology and equivariant BRST cohomology and the fact that all but one of the physical operators are BRST-exact. The puncture equation and the dilaton equation of pure topological gravity are reproduced, following reference \dil.
We define recursion relations for N = 8 supergravity amplitudes using a generalization of the on-shell diagrams developed for planar N = 4 super-Yang-Mills. Although the recursion relations generically give rise to non-planar on-shell diagrams, we show that at tree-level the recursion can be chosen to yield only planar diagrams, the same diagrams occurring in the planar N = 4 theory. This implies non-trivial identities for non-planar diagrams as well as interesting relations between the N = 4 and N = 8 theories. We show that the on-shell diagrams of N = 8 supergravity obey equivalence relation…
We present a semi-recursive method for calculating the rational parts of one-loop gravity amplitudes which utilises axial gauge diagrams to determine the non-factorising pieces of the amplitude. This method is used to compute the one-loop amplitudes M(1-,2+,3+,4+,5+) and M(1-,2+,3+,4+,5+,6+).
We consider on-shell recursion relations for all Born QCD amplitudes. This includes amplitudes with several pairs of quarks and massive quarks. We give a detailed description on how to shift the external particles in spinor space and clarify the allowed helicities of the shifted legs. We proof that the corresponding meromorphic functions vanish at z --> infinity. As an application we obtain compact expressions for helicity amplitudes including a pair of massive quarks, one negative helicity gluon and an arbitrary number of positive helicity gluons.
We study the application of recursion relations to the calculation of finite one-loop gravity amplitudes. It is shown explicitly that the known four, five, and six graviton one-loop amplitudes for which the external legs have identical outgoing helicities, and the four graviton amplitude with helicities (-,+,+,+) can be derived from simple recursion relations. The latter amplitude is derived by introducing a one-loop three-point vertex of gravitons of positive helicity, which is the counterpart in gravity of the one-loop three-plus vertex in Yang-Mills. We show that new issues arise for the fi…
Celestial amplitudes are flat-space amplitudes which are Mellin-transformed to correlators living on the celestial sphere. In this note we present a recursion relation, based on a tree-level BCFW recursion, for gravitational celestial amplitudes and use it to explore the notion of conformal softness. As the BCFW formula exponentiates in the soft energy, it leads directly to conformal soft theorems in an exponential form. These appear from a soft piece of the amplitude characterized by a discrete family of singularities with weights $Δ=1-\mathbb{Z}_+$. As a byproduct, in the case of the MHV sec…
The recursion relations of 2D quantum gravity coupled to the Ising model discussed by the author previously are reexamined. We study the case in which the matter sector satisfies the fusion rules and only the primary operators inside the Kac table contribute. The theory involves unregularized divergences in some of correlators. We obtain the recursion relations which form a closed set among well-defined correlators on sphere, but they do not have a beautiful structure that the bosonized theory has and also give an inconsistent result when they include an ill-defined correlator with the diverge…
We identify the puncture operator in c=1 Liouville gravity as the discrete state with spin J=1/2. The correlation functions involving this operator satisfy the recursion relation which is characteristic in topological gravity. We derive the recursion relation involving the puncture operator by the operator product expansion. Multiple point correlation functions are determined recursively from fewer point functions by this recursion relation.
It is well-known that the standard BCFW construction cannot be used for on-shell amplitudes in effective field theories due to bad behavior for large shifts. We show how to solve this problem in the case of the SU(N) non-linear sigma model, i.e. non-renormalizable model with infinite number of interaction vertices, using scaling properties of the semi-on-shell currents, and we present new on-shell recursion relations for all on-shell tree-level amplitudes in this theory.
We analyze the validity of BCFW recursion relations for currents of n - 2 gluons and two massive quarks, where one of the quarks is off shell and the remaining particles are on shell. These currents are gauge-dependent and can be used as ingredients in the unitarity-based approach to computing one-loop amplitudes. The validity of BCFW recursion relations is well known to depend on the so-called boundary behavior of the currents as the momentum shift parameter goes to infinity. With off-shell currents, a new potential problem arises, namely unphysical poles that depend on the choice of gauge. W…
We present a systematic method to evaluate the splitting functions for tree-level QCD processes where m partons approach the collinear limit. The splitting functions are computed by deriving on-shell recursion equations, which are similar to the Berends-Giele recursion relations for off-shell currents.
We construct the off-shell recursion for gravity and the graviton current for the perturbative double field theory (DFT). We first formulate the perturbative DFT, which is equivalent but simpler to perturbative general relativity, to all-orders in fluctuations of generalised metric. The perturbative action and equations of motion (EoM) are derived to arbitrary order for pure gravity case. We then derive the graviton off-shell recursion, the gravity counterpart of the Berends-Giele recursion in Yang-Mills theory, through the so-called perturbiner method using the EoM of the perturbative DFT. We…
We investigate the application of the BCFW recursion relation to scattering amplitudes with one off-shell particle in a Yang-Mills theory with fermions. We provide a set of conditions of applicability of the BCFW recursion, stressing some important differences with respect to the pure on-shell case. We show how the formulas for Maximally-Helicity-Violating (MHV) configurations with any number of partons, which are well known in the fully on-shell case, are generalized to this kinematic regime. We also derive analytic expressions for all the helicity configurations of the 5-point color-stripped…
In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to systematically determine the missing boundary contributions, when one uses the BCFW on-shell recursion relation to calculate tree amplitudes for general quantum field theories. After an instruction of the algorithm, we will use several examples to demonstrate its application, including amplitudes of color-ordered phi-4 theory, Yang-Mills theory, Einstein-Maxwell theory and color-ordered Yukawa theory with phi-4 interaction.
Recently, an extension of the BCFW on-shell recursion relation suitable to compute gauge invariant scattering amplitudes with off-shell particles has been presented for Yang-Mills theories with fermions. In particular, 4- and 5-point amplitudes have been completely worked out. The results are needed for the study of multi-parton scattering at hadron colliders in the framework of High Energy Factorization (HEF).
We establish a set of new on-shell recursion relations for amplitudes satisfying soft theorems. The recursion relations can apply to those amplitudes whose additional physical inputs from soft theorems are enough to overcome the bad large-z behaviour. This work is a generalization of the recursion relations recently obtained by Cheung et al for amplitudes in scalar effective field theories with enhanced vanishing soft behaviours, which can be regarded as a special case of those with non-vanishing soft limits. We apply the recursion relations to tree-level amplitudes in various theories, includ…
Britto, Cachazo and Feng have recently derived a recursion relation for tree-level scattering amplitudes in Yang-Mills. This relation has a bilinear structure inherited from factorisation on multi-particle poles of the scattering amplitudes - a rather generic feature of field theory. Motivated by this, we propose a new recursion relation for scattering amplitudes of gravitons at tree level. Using this recursion relation, we derive a new general formula for the MHV tree-level scattering amplitude for n gravitons. Finally, we comment on the existence of recursion relations in general field theor…
Niels Bohr International Academy, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）；Theoretical Physics Department, CERN（欧洲核子研究中心理论物理部）；Department of Physics, Yonsei University（延世大学物理系）；Quantum Universe Center, Korea Institute for Advanced Study（韩国高等研究院量子宇宙中心）
In this paper, we study loop corrections to the recently proposed new soft theorem of Cachazo-Strominger, for both gravity and gauge theory amplitudes. We first review the proof of its tree-level validity based on BCFW recursion relations, which also establishes an infinite series of universals soft functions for MHV amplitudes, and a generalization to supersymmetric cases. For loop corrections, we focus on infrared finite, rational amplitudes at one loop, and apply recursion relations with boundary or double-pole contributions. For all-plus amplitudes, we prove that the subleading soft-theore…
We construct two and three-line shifts for tree-level amplitude with massless and/or massive particles, and provide a method to construct general multi-line shifts for all masses. We choose the massless-massive BCFW shift from these shifts and examine its validity in renormalizable theories. Using such a shift, we find that amplitudes with at least one massless vector boson are constructible. This reveals the importance of gauge theory in the construction of amplitudes with massive particles. We also find that this kind of amplitudes have a cancellation related to group structure among differe…
Recently it has been shown that in gauge theories amplitudes to any perturbation order can be obtained by glueing together simple three-point on-shell amplitudes. These three-point amplitudes in turn are fixed by locality and Lorentz invariance. This factorization into three-point on-shell amplitudes follows from the BCFW recursion relations and the Feynman-tree theorem. In an explicit example, that is, the four-gluon amplitude with all plus helicities, we illustrate the method. In conventional calculation this amplitude corresponds to one-loop box diagrams.
Using the method of on-shell recursion relations we compute tree level amplitudes including D-dimensional scalars and fermions. These tree level amplitudes are needed for calculations of one-loop amplitudes in QCD involving external quarks and gluons.
In the gauge-theoretic formulation of gravity the cubic vertex becomes simple enough for some graviton scattering amplitudes to be computed using Berends-Giele-type recursion relations. We present such a computation for the current with all same helicity on-shell gravitons. Once the recursion relation is set up and low graviton number cases are worked out, a natural guess for the solution in terms of a sum over trees presents itself readily. The solution can also be described either in terms of the half-soft function familiar from the 1998 paper by Bern, Dixon, Perelstein and Rozowsky or as a …
We discuss a link between the topological recursion relations derived algebraically by Witten and the holomorphic anomaly equation of Bershadsky, Cecotti, Ooguri and Vafa. This is obtained through the definition of an operator ${\cal{W}}_s$ that reproduces the recursion relations for topological string theory coupled to worldsheet gravity a la BCOV. This operator is contained inside an algebra that generalizes the tt* equations and whose direct consequence is the holomorphic anomaly equation itself.
Recently, it has been shown that on-shell scattering amplitudes can be constructed by the Feynman-tree theorem combined with the BCFW recursion relations. Since the BCFW relations are restricted to tree diagrams, the preceding application of the Feynman-tree theorem is essential. In this way amplitudes can be constructed by on-shell and gauge-invariant tree amplitudes. Here we want to apply this method to the electron-photon vertex correction. We present all the single, double, and triple phase-space tensor integrals explicitly and show that the sum of amplitudes coincides with the result of t…
We perform a comprehensive study of on-shell recursion relations for Born amplitudes in spontaneously broken gauge theories and identify the minimal shifts required to construct amplitudes with a given particle content and spin quantum numbers. We show that two-line or three-line shifts are sufficient to construct all amplitudes with five or more particles, apart from amplitudes involving longitudinal vector bosons or scalars, which may require at most five-line shifts. As an application, we revisit selection rules for multi-boson amplitudes using on-shell recursion and little-group transforma…
It is well known that under a BCFW-deformation, there is a boundary contribution when the amplitude scales as O(1) or worse. We show that boundary contributions have a similar recursion relation as scattering amplitude. Just like the BCFW recursion relation, where scattering amplitudes are expressed as the products of two on-shell sub-amplitudes (plus possible boundary contributions), our new recursion relation expresses boundary contributions as products of sub-amplitudes and boundary contributions with less legs, plus yet another possible boundary contribution. In other words, the complete s…
We apply the on-shell tree-level recursion relations of Britto, Cachazo, Feng and Witten to a variety of processes involving internal and external massive particles with spin. We show how to construct multi-vector boson currents where one or more off-shell vector bosons couples to a quark pair and number of gluons. We give compact results for single vector boson currents with up to six partons and double vector boson currents with up to four partons for all helicity combinations. We also provide expressions for single vector boson currents with a quark pair and an arbitrary number of gluons fo…
A given field theory action determines a set of field equations but other actions may yield equivalent field equations; if so they are on-shell equivalent. They may also be off-shell equivalent, being related by the elimination of auxiliary fields or by local field redefinitions, but this is not guaranteed, as we demonstrate by consideration of the linearized limit of 3D massive gravity models. Failure to appreciate this subtlety has led to incorrect conclusions in recent studies of the "Minimal Massive Gravity" model.
