Planar radiation zeros in five-parton QCD amplitudes

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of `planar', or `type-II', radiation zeros in 5-parton QCD scattering processes. That is, the Born amplitudes are shown to completely vanish for particular kinematic configurations, when all the particle 3-momenta lie in a plane. This result is shown to follow particularly simply from the known BCJ relations between the colour-ordered tree amplitudes, and the MHV formalism is used to express the additional kinematic constraint as a relatively simple expression in terms of only rapidity differences between the final-state partons. In addition, we find that zeros exist for non-planar configurations of the final-state partons, but for which the normal `type-I' conditions on the particle four-momenta do not generally apply. We present numerical results and comment on the possibility of observing planar radiation zeros in hadronic collisions, via central exclusive three-jet production.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures. Version accepted for publication in JHE