On-shell diagrams and the geometry of planar N < 4 SYM theories

We continue the discussion of the decorated on-shell diagrammatics for planar N < 4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories started in arXiv:1510.03642. In particular, we focus on its relation with the structure of varieties on the Grassmannian. The decoration of the on-shell diagrams, which physically keeps tracks of the helicity of the coherent states propagating along their edges, defines new on-shell functions on the Grassmannian and can introduce novel higher-order singularities, which graphically are reflected into the presence of helicity loops in the diagrams. These new structures turn out to have similar features as in the non-planar case: the related higher-codimension varieties are identified by either the vanishing of one (or more) Plucker coordinates involving at least two non-adjacent columns, or new relations among Plucker coordinates. A distinctive feature is that the functions living on these higher-codimenson varieties can be thought of distributionally as having support on derivative delta-functions. After a general discussion, we explore in some detail the structures of the on-shell functions on Gr(2,4) and Gr(3,6) on which the residue theorem allows to obtain a plethora of identities among them.Comment: 34 pages, 65 figure

Positive Geometries and Differential Forms with Non-Logarithmic Singularities I

Positive geometries encode the physics of scattering amplitudes in flat space-time and the wavefunction of the universe in cosmology for a large class of models. Their unique canonical forms, providing such quantum mechanical observables, are characterised by having only logarithmic singularities along all the boundaries of the positive geometry. However, physical observables have logarithmic singularities just for a subset of theories. Thus, it becomes crucial to understand whether a similar paradigm can underlie their structure in more general cases. In this paper we start a systematic investigation of a geometric-combinatorial characterisation of differential forms with non-logarithmic singularities, focusing on projective polytopes and related meromorphic forms with multiple poles. We introduce the notions of covariant forms and covariant pairings. Covariant forms have poles only along the boundaries of the given polytope; moreover, their leading Laurent coefficients along any of the boundaries are still covariant forms on the specific boundary. Whereas meromorphic forms in covariant pairing with a polytope are associated to a specific (signed) triangulation, in which poles on spurious boundaries do not cancel completely, but their order is lowered. These meromorphic forms can be fully characterised if the polytope they are associated to is viewed as the restriction of a higher dimensional one onto a hyperplane. The canonical form of the latter can be mapped into a covariant form or a form in covariant pairing via a covariant restriction. We show how the geometry of the higher dimensional polytope determines the structure of these differential forms. Finally, we discuss how these notions are related to Jeffrey-Kirwan residues and cosmological polytopes.Comment: 47 pages, figures in Tik