A modern approach to String Amplitudes and Intersection Theory

Abstract

In this thesis, we study the properties of String theory amplitudes within the framework of Intersection Theory (IT) for twisted (co)homology, which, as recently proposed, offered a novel approach to analyze relations between scattering amplitudes, in string theory as well as in QFT. As only recently pointed out, thanks to IT, the analytic properties of scattering amplitudes can be related to the topological properties of the manifolds characterizing their integral representation. Tree-level string amplitudes, as well as Feynman integrals, obey both linear and quadratic relations governed by intersection numbers, which act as scalar products between vector spaces. We show how (co)homology with values in a local system allows to interpret closed strings tree amplitudes as intersection numbers between twisted cocycles, and open strings tree amplitudes as parings between a twisted cocycle and a twisted cycle. We present different algorithms to evaluate univariate and multivariate intersection numbers between both log and non-log twisted cocycles. We explore a diagrammatic method for the computation of intersection number between twisted cycles of the moduli space of the n-punctured Riemann sphere. We use IT to rederive Kawai-Lewellen-Tye (KLT) relations, naturally emerging as a twisted version of Riemann period relations. We compute intersection matrix between 2D twisted cycles to explicitly obtain the KLT decomposition of five closed tachyons tree amplitudes into partial five open tachyons tree amplitudes. We explicitly determine the intersection matrix between 2D Parke-Taylor (PT) forms. We use a recursive algorithm for generic n cocycle intersection numbers to project tachyon amplitudes integrand into a PT basis, and we apply it to the scattering of four and five tachyons. The methods discussed in the thesis can be broadly applied to problems involving Aomoto-Gelfand integrals.