In perturbative amplitudes in quantum field theory and string field theory, Cutkosky rule expresses the anti-hermitian part of a Feynman diagram in terms of sum over all its cut diagrams, and this in turn is used to prove unitarity of the theory. For D-instanton contribution to a string theory amplitude, the cutting rule needed for the proof of unitarity is somewhat different; we need to sum over only those cut diagrams for which all the world-sheet boundaries ending on some particular D-instanton lie on the same side of the cut. By working with the closed string effective action, obtained after integrating out the open string modes, we prove that the D-instanton amplitudes actually satisfy these cutting rules, provided the effective action is real. The violation of unitarity in the closed string sector of two dimensional string theory can be traced to the failure of this reality condition. In the critical superstring theory, multi-instanton and multi anti-instanton amplitudes satisfy the reality condition. Contribution to the amplitudes from the instanton anti-instanton sector satisfies the reality condition if we make a specific choice of integration cycle over the configuration space of string fields, whereas contribution due to the non-BPS D-instantons will need to either vanish or have an overall real normalization in order for it to give real contribution. We use Picard-Lefschetz theory to argue that these conditions are indeed satisfied in superstring theories.
We prove the unitarity of the Euclidean nonlocal scalar field theory to all perturbative orders in the loop expansion. The amplitudes in the Euclidean space are calculated assuming that all the particles have purely imaginary energies, and afterwards they are analytically continued to real energies. We show that such amplitudes satisfy the Cutkowsky rules and that only the cut diagrams corresponding to normal thresholds contribute to their imaginary part. This implies that the theory is unitary. This analysis is then exported to nonlocal gauge and gravity theories by means of Becchi-Rouet-Stor…
We derive the Cutkosky rules for conformal field theories (CFTs) at weak and strong coupling. These rules give a simple, diagrammatic method to compute the double-commutator that appears in the Lorentzian inversion formula. We first revisit weakly-coupled CFTs in flat space, where the cuts are performed on Feynman diagrams. We then generalize these rules to strongly-coupled holographic CFTs, where the cuts are performed on the Witten diagrams of the dual theory. In both cases, Cutkosky rules factorize loop diagrams into on-shell sub-diagrams and generalize the standard S-matrix cutting rules. …
We investigate the unitarity of three dimensional noncommutative scalar field theory in the Lie algebraic noncommutative spacetime [x^i,x^j]=2i kappa epsilon^{ijk}x_k. This noncommutative field theory possesses a SL(2,R)/Z_2 group momentum space, which leads to a Hopf algebraic translational symmetry. We check the Cutkosky rule of the one-loop self-energy diagrams in the noncommutative phi^3 theory when we include a braiding, which is necessary for the noncommutative field theory to possess the Hopf algebraic translational symmetry at quantum level. Then, we find that the Cutkosky rule is sati…
We show that Minkowskian non-local quantum field theories are not unitary. We consider a simple one loop diagram for a scalar non-local field and show that the imaginary part of the corresponding complex amplitude is not given by Cutkosky rules, indeed this diagram violates the unitarity condition. We compare this result with the case of an Euclidean non-local scalar field, that has been shown to satisfy the Cutkosky rules, and we clearly identify the reason of the breaking of unitarity of the Minkowskian theory.
We reconsider perturbative unitarity violation in the standard model Higgs inflation model. We show that the Cutkosky cutting rule implied by perturbative unitarity is fulfilled at one-loop. This is a strong indication that unitarity is restored order by order in perturbation theory. We then resum certain one-loop diagrams and show that the relevant dressed amplitude fulfills the Cutkosky rule exactly. This is an example of the self-healing mechanism. The original Higgs inflation model is thus consistent and does not require any new physics beyond the standard model at least up to the Planck s…
In this paper we show how to define the UV completion of a scalar field theory such that it is both UV-finite and perturbatively unitary. In the UV completed theory, the propagator is an infinite sum of ordinary propagators. To eliminate the UV divergences, we choose the coefficients and masses in the propagator to satisfy certain algebraic relations, and define the infinite sums involved in Feynman diagram calculation by analytic continuation. Unitarity can be proved relatively easily by Cutkosky's rules. The theory is equivalent to infinitely many particles with specific masses and interacti…
We study scalar field theories on Poincare invariant commutative nonassociative spacetimes. We compute the one-loop self-energy diagrams in the ordinary path integral quantization scheme with Feynman's prescription, and find that the Cutkosky rule is satisfied. This property is in contrast with that of noncommutative field theory, since it is known that noncommutative field theory with space/time noncommutativity violates unitarity in the above standard scheme, and the quantization procedure will necessarily become complicated to obtain a sensible Poincare invariant noncommutative field theory…
We study the analyticity properties of amplitudes in theories with nonlocal vertices of the type occurring in string field theory and a wide class of nonlocal field theory models. Such vertices are given in momentum space by entire functions of rapid decay in certain (including Euclidean) directions ensuring UV finiteness but are necessarily of rapid increase in others. A parametric representation is obtained by integrating out the loop (Euclidean) momenta after the introduction of generalized Schwinger parameters. Either in the original or parametric representation, the well-defined resulting…
The unitarity condition for scattering amplitudes in a non-anticommutative quantum field theory is investigated. The Cutkosky rules are shown to hold for Feynman diagrams in Euclidean momentum space and unitarity of amplitudes can be satisfied. An analytic continuation of the diagrams to physical Minkowski spacetime can be performed without invoking unphysical singularities in amplitudes. The high energy behavior of amplitudes is found to be regular at infinity provided that only space-space non-anticommutativity is allowed.
We investigate unitarity within the Complex-Mass Scheme, a convenient universal scheme for perturbative calculations involving unstable particles in Quantum Field Theory which guarantees exact gauge invariance. Since this scheme requires to introduce complex masses and complex couplings, the Cutkosky cutting rules, which express perturbative unitarity in theories of stable particles, are no longer valid. We derive corresponding rules for scalar theories with unstable particles based on Veltman's Largest-Time Equation and prove unitarity in this framework.
To illustrate the unitarity of the massive gauge field theory described in the foregoing papers, we calculate the scattering amplitudes up to the fourth order of perturbation by the optical theorem and the Landau-Cutkosky rule. In the calculations, it is shown that for a given process, if all the diagrams are taken into account, the contributions arising from the unphysical intermediate states included in the longitudinal part of the gauge boson propagator and in the ghost particle propagator are completely cancelled out with each other in the S-matrix elements. Therefore, the unitarity of the…
We compute the imaginary parts of genus-one string scattering amplitudes. Following Witten's $i\varepsilon$ prescription for the integration contour on the moduli space of worldsheets, we give a general algorithm for computing unitarity cuts of the annulus, Möbius strip, and torus topologies exactly in $α'$. With the help of tropical analysis, we show how the intricate pattern of thresholds (normal and anomalous) opening up arises from the worldsheet computation. The result is a manifestly-convergent representation of the imaginary parts of amplitudes, which has the analytic form expected from…
We show that non-perturbative entities such as solitons and instantons saturate bounds on entropy when the theory saturates unitarity. Simultaneously, the entropy becomes equal to the area of the soliton/instanton. This is strikingly similar to black hole entropy despite absence of gravity. We explain why this similarity is not an accident. We present a formulation that allows to apply the entropy bound to instantons. The new formulation also eliminates apparent violations of the Bekenstein entropy bound by some otherwise-consistent unitary systems. We observe that in QCD, an isolated instanto…
The IR/UV mixing and the violation of unitarity are two of the most intriguing aspects of noncommutative quantum field theories. In this paper the relation between these two phenomena is explained and established. We start out by showing that the S-matrix of noncommutative field theories is hermitian analytic. As a consequence, a noncommutative field theory is unitary if the discontinuities of its Feynman diagram amplitudes agree with the expressions calculated using the Cutkosky formulae. These unitarity constraints relate the discontinuities of amplitudes with physical intermediate states; a…
We report the "state of the art" of the problem of $B+L$ violation in high-energy electroweak scatterings. Results of various analyses point toward (though do not prove rigorously yet) the "half-suppression", i.e., that the $B+L$ violating cross section remains suppressed at least by the negative exponent of the single instanton action, at all energies. Most interesting techniques developed in this field are reviewed. Particular attention is paid to unitarity constraints on the anomalous cross section, and to some conceptual problem involving the use of the optical theorem in the presence of i…
We report on the computation of the one-instanton contribution to the 16-point Green function of fermionic composite operators in N=4 Super YM theory. The remarkable agreement, initially found in the case of an SU(2) gauge group, with the one D-instanton contribution to the corresponding type IIB superstring amplitude on $AdS_5\times S^5$ is reviewed here. The recent extension by other authors of this result to any SU(N) gauge group and to multi-instantons in the large N limit is briefly discussed. We also argue that for the AdS/SCFT correspondence under consideration to work for any $N\geq 2$…
We study the effect of ZZ instantons in c = 1 string theory, and demonstrate that they give rise to non-perturbative corrections to scattering amplitudes that do not saturate unitarity within the closed string sector. Beyond the leading non-perturbative order, logarithmic divergences are canceled between worldsheet diagrams of different topologies, due to the Fischler-Susskind-Polchinski mechanism. We propose that the closed string vacuum in c = 1 string theory is non-perturbatively dual to a state of the matrix quantum mechanics in which all scattering states up to a given energy with no inco…
We establish that unitarity of scattering amplitudes imposes universal entropy bounds. The maximal entropy of a self-sustained quantum field object of radius R is equal to its surface area and at the same time to the inverse running coupling evaluated at the scale R. The saturation of these entropy bounds is in one-to-one correspondence with the non-perturbative saturation of unitarity by 2-to-N particle scattering amplitudes at the point of optimal truncation. These bounds are more stringent than Bekenstein's bound and in a consistent theory all three get saturated simultaneously. This is tru…
This paper is devoted to an investigation of Euclidean wormholes made by fuzzy instantons. We investigate the Euclidean path integral in anti-de Sitter space. In Einstein gravity, we introduce a scalar field with a potential. Because of the analyticity, there is a contribution of complex-valued instantons, so-called fuzzy instantons. If we have a massless scalar field, then we obtain Euclidean wormholes, where the probabilities become smaller and smaller as the size of the throat becomes larger and larger. If we introduce a non-trivial potential, then in order to obtain a non-zero tunneling ra…
We revisit the problem of dipole-dipole scattering via exchanges of soft Pomerons in the context of holographic QCD. We show that a single closed string exchange contribution to the eikonalized dipole-dipole scattering amplitude yields a Regge behavior of the elastic amplitude; the corresponding slope and intercept are different from previous results obtained by a variational analysis of semi-classical surfaces. We provide a physical interpretation of the semi-classical worldsheets driving the Regge behavior for (-t)>0 in terms of worldsheet instantons. The latter describe the Schwinger mechan…
