From Six to Four and More: Massless and Massive Maximal Super Yang-Mills Amplitudes in 6d and 4d and their Hidden Symmetries

A self-consistent exposition of the theory of tree-level superamplitudes of the 4d N=4 and 6d N=(1,1) maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories is provided. In 4d we work in non-chiral superspace and construct the superconformal and dual superconformal symmetry generators of the N=4 SYM theory using the non-chiral BCFW recursion to prove the latter. In 6d we provide a complete derivation of the standard and hidden symmetries of the tree-level superamplitudes of N=(1,1) SYM theory, again using the BCFW recursion to prove the dual conformal symmetry. Furthermore, we demonstrate that compact analytical formulae for tree-superamplitudes in N=(1,1) SYM can be obtained from a numerical implementation of the supersymmetric BCFW recursion relation. We derive compact manifestly dual conformal representations of the five- and six-point superamplitudes as well as arbitrary multiplicity formulae valid for certain classes of superamplitudes related to ultra-helicity-violating massive amplitudes in 4d. We study massive tree superamplitudes on the Coulomb branch of the N=4 SYM theory from dimensional reduction of the massless superamplitudes of the six-dimensional N=(1,1) SYM theory. We exploit this correspondence to construct the super-Poincare and enhanced dual conformal symmetries of massive tree superamplitudes in N=4 SYM theory which are shown to close into a finite dimensional algebra of Yangian type. Finally, we address the fascinating possibility of uplifting massless 4d superamplitudes to 6d massless superamplitudes proposed by Huang. We confirm the uplift for multiplicities up to eight but show that finding the uplift is highly non-trivial and in fact not of a practical use for multiplicities larger than five.Comment: 77 pages, 1 figure. v2: Reference adde

Scattering into the fifth dimension of N=4 super Yang-Mills

We study an alternative to dimensional regularisation of planar scattering amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory by going to the Coulomb phase of the theory. The infrared divergences are regulated by masses obtained from a Higgs mechanism, allowing us to work in four dimensions. The corresponding string theory set-up suggests that the amplitudes have an exact dual conformal symmetry. The latter acts on the kinematical variables of the amplitudes as well as on the Higgs masses in an effectively five dimensional space. We confirm this expectation by an explicit calculation in the gauge theory. A consequence of this exact dual conformal symmetry is a significantly reduced set of scalar basis integrals that are allowed to appear in an amplitude. For example, triangle sub-graphs are ruled out. We argue that the study of exponentiation of amplitudes is simpler in the Higgsed theory because evanescent terms in the mass regulator can be consistently dropped. We illustrate this by showing the exponentiation of a four-point amplitude to two loops. Finally, we also analytically compute the small mass expansion of a two-loop master integral with an internal mass.Comment: 35 pages, many figures. v2: typos and references fixed. v3: minor changes, version to be published in JHE

All tree-level amplitudes in massless QCD

We derive compact analytical formulae for all tree-level color-ordered gauge theory amplitudes involving any number of external gluons and up to three massless quark-anti-quark pairs. A general formula is presented based on the combinatorics of paths along a rooted tree and associated determinants. Explicit expressions are displayed for the next-to-maximally helicity violating (NMHV) and next-to-next-to-maximally helicity violating (NNMHV) gauge theory amplitudes. Our results are obtained by projecting the previously-found expressions for the super-amplitudes of the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory (N=4 SYM) onto the relevant components yielding all gluon-gluino tree amplitudes in N=4 SYM. We show how these results carry over to the corresponding QCD amplitudes, including massless quarks of different flavors as well as a single electroweak vector boson. The public Mathematica package GGT is described, which encodes the results of this work and yields analytical formulae for all N=4 SYM gluon-gluino trees. These in turn yield all QCD trees with up to four external arbitrary-flavored massless quark-anti-quark-pairs.Comment: 40 pages, Mathematica package GGT.m and example notebook is included in submission, v2: QCD four fermion line translations provided; GGT version 1.1 update with a numerical evaluation function; comments on computer speed optimizations, v3: Minor changes, version to be published in JHEP, v4: published version in JHE

Comparing efficient computation methods for massless QCD tree amplitudes: Closed Analytic Formulae versus Berends-Giele Recursion

Recent advances in our understanding of tree-level QCD amplitudes in the massless limit exploiting an effective (maximal) supersymmetry have led to the complete analytic construction of tree-amplitudes with up to four external quark-anti-quark pairs. In this work we compare the numerical efficiency of evaluating these closed analytic formulae to a numerically efficient implementation of the Berends-Giele recursion. We compare calculation times for tree-amplitudes with parton numbers ranging from 4 to 25 with no, one, two and three external quark lines. We find that the exact results are generally faster in the case of MHV and NMHV amplitudes. Starting with the NNMHV amplitudes the Berends-Giele recursion becomes more efficient. In addition to the runtime we also compared the numerical accuracy. The analytic formulae are on average more accurate than the off-shell recursion relations though both are well suited for complicated phenomenological applications. In both cases we observe a reduction in the average accuracy when phase space configurations close to singular regions are evaluated. We believe that the above findings provide valuable information to select the right method for phenomenological applications.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, Mathematica package GGT.m and example notebook is included in submissio