We use on-shell methods to calculate tree-level effective field theory (EFT) amplitudes, with no reference to the EFT operators. Lorentz symmetry, unitarity and Bose statistics determine the allowed kinematical structures. As a by-product, the number of independent EFT operators simply follows from the set of polynomials in the Mandelstam invariants, subject to kinematical constraints. We demonstrate this approach by calculating several amplitudes with a massive, SM-singlet, scalar ($h$) or vector ($Z^\prime$) particle coupled to gluons. Specifically, we calculate $hggg$, $hhgg$ and $Z^\prime ggg$ amplitudes, which are relevant for the LHC production and three-gluon decays of the massive particle. We then use the results to derive the massless-$Z^\prime$ amplitudes, and show how the massive amplitudes decompose into the massless-vector plus scalar amplitudes. Amplitudes with the gluons replaced by photons are straightforwardly obtained from the above.
Off-shell Ward identities in non-abelian gauge theory continue to be a subject of active research, since they are, in general, inhomogeneous and their form depends on the chosen gauge-fixing procedure. For the three-gluon and four-gluon vertices, it is known that a relatively simple form of the Ward identity can be achieved using the pinch technique or, equivalently, the background-field method with quantum Feynman gauge. The latter is also the gauge-fixing underlying the string-inspired formalism, and here we use this formalism to derive the corresponding form of the Ward identity for the one…
I report on recent advancements regarding calculations that require initial-state partons with non-vanishing transverse momentum, causing it to be space-like and thus off-shell.
The Cachazo-He-Yuan (CHY) formula for on-shell scattering amplitudes are extended off-shell. The off-shell amplitudes are Möbius invariant, and have the same momentum poles as the on-shell amplitudes. The same technique is also used to obtain off-shell massive scalar and vector boson amplitudes.
Within the effective QCD action for the Regge kinematics amplitudes for virtual gluon emission are studied in collision of a projectile with two and three targets. It is demonstrated that all un- Feynman singularities cancel between induced vertices and rescattering contributions. Formulas simplify considerably in a special gauge which is a straightforward generalization of the light-cone gauge for emission of real gluons.
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.
The Bern-Kosower formalism, developed around 1990 as a novel way of obtaining QCD amplitudes as the limit of infinite string tension of the corresponding string amplitudes, was originally designed as an on-shell formalism. Building on early work by Strassler, the authors have recently shown that this `string-inspired formalism' is extremely efficient also as a tool for the study of off-shell amplitudes in QCD, and in particular for achieving compact form factor decompositions of the N-gluon vertices. Among other things, this formalism allows one to achieve a manifestly gauge invariant decompos…
We calculate one loop scattering amplitudes for arbitrary number of positive helicity on-shell gluons and one off-shell gluon treated within the quasi-multi Regge kinematics. The result is fully gauge invariant and possesses the correct on-shell limit. Our method is based on embedding the off-shell process, together with contributions needed to retain gauge invariance, in a bigger fully on-shell process with auxiliary quark or gluon line.
In this paper we consider tree-level gauge invariant off-shell amplitudes (Wilson line form factors) in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM. For the off-shell amplitudes with one leg off-shell we present a conjecture for their Grassmannian integral representation in spinor helicity, twistor and momentum twistor parameterizations. The presented conjecture is successfully checked against BCFW results for MHV$_n$, NMHV$_4$ and NMHV$_5$ off-shell amplitudes. We have also verified that our Grassmannian integral representation correctly reproduces soft (on-shell) limit for the off-shell gluon momentum. It is shown …
We compute the planar part of the two-loop five gluon amplitude with all helicities positive. To perform the calculation we develop a D-dimensional generalized unitarity procedure allowing us to reconstruct the amplitude by cutting into products of six-dimensional trees. We find a compact form for the integrand which only requires topologies with six or more propagators. We perform cross checks of the universal infra-red structure using numerical integration techniques.
Using Hopf-algebraic structures as well as diagrammatic techniques for determining the Slavnov-Taylor identities for QCD we construct the relations for the triple and quartic gluon vertices at one loop. By making the longitudinal projection on an external gluon of a Green's function we show that the gluon self-energy of that leg is consistently replaced by a ghost self-energy. The resulting identities are then studied by evaluating all the graphs for an off-shell non-exceptional momentum configuration. In the case of the 3-point function this is for the most general momentum case and for the 4…
Gluon amplitudes at most-subleading order in the $1/N$ expansion share a remarkable simplicity with graviton amplitudes: collinear divergences are completely absent in both and, as a consequence, their full IR behavior arises from soft gluon/graviton exchange among the external states. In this paper we study the effect of all-loop IR divergences of celestial most-subleading color gluon amplitudes and their similarities with the celestial gravity case. In particular, a simple celestial exponentiation formula for the dipole part can be written. We also analize how this exponentiation is modified…
We present the first numerical computation of two-loop amplitudes based on the unitarity method. As a proof of principle, we compute the four-gluon process. We discuss the new method, analyze its numerical properties and apply it to reconstruct the analytic form of the amplitudes. The numerical method is universal, and can be automated to provide multi-scale two-loop computations for phenomenologically relevant signatures at hadron colliders.
We present a compact analytic expression for the leading colour two-loop five-gluon amplitude in Yang-Mills theory with a single negative helicity and four positive helicities. The analytic result is reconstructed from numerical evaluations over finite fields. The numerical method combines integrand reduction, integration-by-parts identities and Laurent expansion into a basis of pentagon functions to compute the coefficients directly from six-dimensional generalised unitarity cuts.
We present the analytic form of the two-loop five-gluon scattering amplitudes in QCD for a complete set of independent helicity configurations of external gluons. These include the first analytic results for five-point two-loop amplitudes relevant for the computation of next-to-next-to-leading-order QCD corrections at hadron colliders. The results were obtained by reconstructing analytic expressions from numerical evaluations. The complexity of the computation is reduced by exploiting physical and analytical properties of the amplitudes, employing a minimal basis of so-called pentagon function…
We compute the three-loop helicity amplitudes for $q\bar{q} \to gg$ and its crossed partonic channels, in massless QCD. Our analytical results provide a non-trivial check of the color quadrupole contribution to the infrared poles for external states in different color representations. At high energies, the $qg \to qg$ amplitude shows the predicted factorized form from Regge theory and confirms previous results for the gluon Regge trajectory extracted from $qq' \to qq'$ and $gg \to gg$ scattering.
We present a calculation of the planar two-loop five-gluon amplitudes. The amplitudes are obtained in a variant of the generalized unitarity approach suitable for numerical computations, which we extend for use with finite field arithmetics. Employing a new method for the generation of unitarity-compatible integration-by-parts identities, all helicity amplitudes are reduced to a linear combination of master integrals for the first time. The approach allows us to compute exact values for the integral coefficients at rational phase-space points. All required master integrals are known analytical…
We present a calculation of the helicity amplitudes for the process $gg\toγγ$ in three-loop massless QCD. We employ a recently proposed method to calculate scattering amplitudes in the 't Hooft-Veltman scheme that reduces the amount of spurious non-physical information needed at intermediate stages of the computation. Our analytic results for the three-loop helicity amplitudes are remarkably compact, and can be efficiently evaluated numerically. This calculation provides the last missing building block for the computation of NNLO QCD corrections to diphoton production in gluon fusion.
We compute the integrand of the full-colour, two-loop, five-gluon scattering amplitude in pure Yang-Mills theory with all helicities positive, using generalized unitarity cuts. Tree-level BCJ relations, satisfied by amplitudes appearing in the cuts, allow us to deduce all the necessary non-planar information for the full-colour amplitude from known planar data. We present our result in terms of irreducible numerators, with colour factors derived from the multi-peripheral colour decomposition. Finally, the leading soft divergences are checked to reproduce the expected infrared behaviour.
We introduce a manifestly little group covariant on-shell superspace for massive particles in four dimensions using the massive spinor helicity formalism. This enables us to construct massive on-shell superfields and fully utilize on-shell symmetry considerations to derive all possible $\mathcal{N}=1$ three-particle amplitudes for particles of spin as high as one, as well as some simple amplitudes for particles of any spin. Throughout, the conceptual and computational simplicity of this approach is exhibited.
