The scattering amplitudes of string theory exhibit many extraordinary properties. But are they the unique mathematical objects to do so? Recently, it has been shown how the spectrum and amplitudes of open string theory follow directly from the assumptions of faster than power-law falloff at high energies and a property dubbed level truncation. At present there is no analogous principle for closed string scattering, which is famously rigid and naively impervious to modification. In this paper we analytically bootstrap the spectrum and four-point amplitudes of the closed string -- together with a parameterized space of deformations -- from conditions on high-energy falloff and level truncation. While these deformations exhibit the same Regge scaling as pure gravity, in the tensionless limit they reproduce remarkable extremal amplitudes that have appeared in bottom-up studies of positivity.
Using the QCD dipole picture of BFKL dynamics and the conformal invariance properties of the BFKL kernel in transverse coordinate space, we show that the 1--to--p dipole densities can be expressed in terms of dual Shapiro- Virasoro amplitudes B{2p+2} and their generalization including non-zero conformal spins. We discuss the possibility of an effective closed string theory of interacting QCD dipoles.
A Dispersive Bootstrap for the Virasoro-Shapiro Amplitude
School of Fundamental Physics and Mathematical Sciences, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, UCAS（杭州高等研究院基础物理与数学学院，UCAS）；Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
We propose a systematic procedure for obtaining all single trace 1/2-BPS correlators in N=4 super Yang-Mills corresponding to the four-point tree-level amplitude for type IIB string theory in AdS5xS5. The underlying idea is to compute generalised contact Witten diagrams coming from a 10d effective field theory on AdS5xS5 whose coefficients are fixed by the flat space Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude up to ambiguities related to commutators of the 10d covariant derivatives which require additional information such as localisation. We illustrate this procedure by computing stringy corrections to the s…
We consider the four-point correlator of the stress-energy tensor in ${\cal N}=4$ SYM, to leading order in inverse powers of the central charge, but including all order corrections in $1/λ$. This corresponds to the AdS version of the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude to all orders in the small $α'$/low energy expansion. Using dispersion relations in Mellin space, we derive an infinite set of sum rules. These sum rules strongly constrain the form of the amplitude, and determine all coefficients in the low energy expansion in terms of the CFT data for heavy string operators, in principle available from…
D1-D5 CFT data from $AdS_3 \times S^3$ Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude
Center for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Fudan University（复旦大学数学与交叉科学研究院）；Shanghai Institute for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (SIMIS)（上海数学与交叉科学研究院）
The genus zero contribution to the four-point correlator $\langle {\cal O}_{p_1}{\cal O}_{p_2}{\cal O}_{p_3}{\cal O}_{p_4}\rangle$ of half-BPS single-particle operators ${\cal O}_p$ in $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills at strong coupling computes the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude of closed superstrings on $AdS_5\times S^5$. Combining Mellin space techniques, the large $p$ limit, and data about the spectrum of two-particle operators at tree level in supergravity, we design a bootstrap algorithm which heavily constrains its $α'$ expansion. We use crossing symmetry, polynomiality in the Mellin variab…
In double field theory, motivated by its field theoretic consistency, the level matching condition is generalized to the so-called strong constraint. In this note, it is investigated what the two-dimensional conformal field theory origin of this constraint is. Initially treating the left- and right-movers as independent, we compute the torus partition function as well as a generalized Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude. In non-compact directions the strong constraint arises from the factorization of the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude over physical states as determined by the modular invariant partition fu…
We calculate gravitational dressed tachyon correlators in non critcal dimensions. The 2D gravity part of our theory is constrained to constant curvature. Then scaling dimensions of gravitational dressed vertex operators are equal to their bare conformal dimensions. Considering the model as d+2 dimensional critical string we calculate poles of generalized Shapiro-Virasoro amplitudes.
The similarity between tree-level string theory scalar amplitudes, the Koba-Nielsen form ($S^{1}$) and the Virasoro-Shapiro form ($S^{2}$) suggests a natural $S^{n}$ generalization for a scalar amplitude. It is shown that the $S^{n}$ amplitude shares many essential properties of the string theory amplitudes, including $SO(n+1,1)$ conformal symmetry and linear Regge trajectories for the mass spectrum. We also discuss factorization and the critical dimension for the amplitude, which are the necessary conditions for the quantum mechanical consistency (unitarity) of the amplitude.
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院沃尔特·伯克理论物理研究所）；Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University（纽约大学物理宇宙学与粒子物理中心）；IFAE and BIST, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona（巴塞罗那自治大学IFAE和BIST）
Infrared Consistency and the Uniqueness of String Amplitudes
National Taiwan University（国立台湾大学）；National Center for Theoretical Sciences（国家理论科学中心）；Max Planck-IAS-NTU Center for Particle Physics, Cosmology and Geometry（马克斯·普朗克研究所-台湾大学粒子物理、宇宙学与几何中心）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）
We study closed bosonic strings propagating both in a flat background with constant H-flux and in its T-dual configurations. We define a conformal field theory capturing linear effects in the flux and compute scattering amplitudes of tachyons, where the Rogers dilogarithm plays a prominent role. For the scattering of four tachyons, a fluxed version of the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude is derived and its pole structure is analyzed. In the case of an R-flux background obtained after three T-dualities, we find indications for a nonassociative target-space structure which can be described in terms of…
String theory offers an elegant and concrete realization of how to consistently couple states of arbitrarily high spin. But how unique is this construction? In this paper we derive a novel, multi-parameter family of four-point scattering amplitudes exhibiting i) polynomially bounded high-energy behavior and ii) exchange of an infinite tower of high-spin modes, albeit with a finite number of states at each resonance. These amplitudes take an infinite-product form and, depending on parameters, exhibit mass spectra that are either unbounded or bounded, thus corresponding to generalizations of the…
