arXiv subjects

Alex Edison

Publications and source records attributed to Alex Edison.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Entire Four-Graviton EFT from the Duality Between Color and Kinematics

The Bern-Carrasco-Johansson (BCJ) double-copy construction reveals a fundamental structural connection between gauge and gravity theories. At its core, the BCJ double copy is directly due to a duality between the algebraic relations of a color root and those of a kinematic root. We generalize this principle beyond the conventional Lie algebra structure of tree-level Yang-Mills theory. By demanding color-kinematics duality for the complete basis of four-point color structures -- including those involving the symmetric $d^{abc}$ constants -- we define the universal double copy. We systematically classify the bases of all such parity-even generalized gauge-theory numerators and, independently, the space of all parity-even four-graviton higher-derivative operators. We demonstrate that our universal double-copy construction precisely spans the entire tower of parity-even four-graviton amplitudes in any dimension, except for the Lovelock $R^3$ contribution in $D >6$ which we can express in terms of a particularly simple universal triple-copy involving gauge theories coupled to scalars. Explicit machine-readable expressions for the complete basis of gauge-theory numerators and fundamental gravitational building blocks are provided in the ancillary files. This establishes that all possible four-point gravitational interactions can be factorized into products of gauge-theory building blocks governed by this universal notion of color-kinematics duality.

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arXiv2025

Non-local-in-time structure formation and sixth-order galaxy bias

We present a systematic construction of the non-local-in-time galaxy bias expansion in the Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure. In order to fully capture time non-locality up to sixth order, we must take into account that every field can contribute non-locally from a separate time in the past. Starting from the general non-local-in-time expression for the galaxy overdensity, we explicitly compute the complete sixth-order basis of bias operators at leading order in spatial derivatives, finding 57 independent biases, compared to 46 in the corresponding local-in-time expansion. As previously found at fifth order, this difference implies that higher-order clustering statistics can distinguish between local- and non-local-in-time galaxy formation, and thus are sensitive, at a single redshift, to the formation time of galaxies. Along the way, we obtain recursion relations for the perturbative kernels and show that they satisfy specific multi-leg soft limits when the sum of a subset of the external momenta goes to zero.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

$D$-Dimensional Modular Assembly of Higher-Derivative Four-Point Contact Amplitudes Involving Fermions

We present a novel robust framework for systematically constructing $D$-dimensional four-point higher-derivative contact amplitudes. Our modular block ("LEGO"-like) approach builds amplitudes directly from manifestly gauge-invariant kinematic blocks, color-weight factors, and scalar Mandelstam polynomials. Symmetries (Bose/Fermi) are imposed algebraically, acting as filters on combinations of compatible pieces. This framework operates entirely in $D$ dimensions, naturally incorporating evanescent operators crucial for loop-level consistency. Scaling to arbitrary mass dimension is achieved in a highly controlled manner using permutation-invariant scalar polynomials, avoiding combinatorial explosion. A key feature is its manifest compatibility with the double-copy program, allowing the systematic generation of operator towers not only for gauge theories but also for gravity and other theories within the double-copy web.

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arXiv2024

Pinching rules in the chiral-splitting description of one-loop string amplitudes

Loop amplitudes in string theories reduce to those of gauge theories and (super)gravity in their worldline description as the inverse string tension $\alpha'$ tends to zero. The appearance of reducible diagrams in these $\alpha' \rightarrow 0$ limits is determined through so-called pinching rules in the worldline literature. In this work, we extend these pinching rules to the chiral-splitting description of one-loop superstring amplitudes where left- and right-moving degrees of freedom decouple at fixed loop momentum. Starting from six points, the Kronecker-Eisenstein integrands of chiral amplitudes introduce subtleties into the pinching rules and integration-by-parts simplifications. Resolutions of these subtleties are presented and applied to produce a new superspace representation of the six-point one-loop amplitude of type IIA/B supergravity. The worldline computations and their subtleties are compared with the ambitwistor-string approach to one-loop field-theory amplitudes where integration-by-parts manipulations are shown to be more flexible. Throughout this work, the homology invariance of loop-momentum dependent correlation functions on the torus is highlighted as a consistency condition of $\alpha' \rightarrow 0$ limits and their comparison with ambitwistor methods.

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arXiv2024

Parting gravity's tail: quadrupole tails at fifth order and beyond via integer partitions

This work studies the systematic organization of higher-order gravitational quadrupole tails using generalized unitarity methods imported from the study of scattering amplitudes. The first major result is a constructive algorithm for generic arbitrary-order tail effective actions which links the structure of their loop integral basis expansion with integer partitions, and predicts that only a single new unitarity cut needs to be evaluated at each tail order with all other contributions given in terms of lower-loop data. The algorithm is employed to compute the tail-of-tail-of-tail-of-tail-of-tail (T$^5$) contributions to the effective action and associated energy loss to gravitational waves. Validation of the new effective action and radiated energy is done through counterterm extraction and renormalization analysis, leading to complete agreement with known counterterms and renormalization flow equations.

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arXiv2024

An exercise in Color-Dual Cut Tiling: $\mathcal{N}=8$ Supergravity from Positivity

The BCJ duality between color and kinematics brings two advantages to calculating multi-loop scattering amplitudes. First the number of ordered cuts that need to be performed to fix the integrand to a gauge theory is minimal -- reducing the factorially-growing number of diagrams to a single-digit basis in all known cases. Second is the trivial generation of related gravitational amplitudes from gauge theory amplitudes via double-copy. Mounting evidence suggests there are some cases where no local color-dual representations exist, even when the semi-classical theory is color-dual. Can we still simplify the calculations without making the duality manifest at the level of the integrand? Here we take a non-trivial step in this direction by showing that the satisfaction of tree-level BCJ relations is sufficient to dramatically reduce the number of explicit cuts that must be performed, even when the loop-level relations are not explicitly satisfied. We introduce an agglomerative algorithm, color-dual cut tiling, that identifies and builds the entire integrand from the simplest on-shell conditions applied to a seed of off-shell integrand information. Specifically, we demonstrate that for two-to-two scattering at three loops in the maximally supersymmetric gauge theory there is sufficient information contained in planar cuts -- completely determined by positivity constraints -- to generate all of the non-planar sector. Additionally, we make use of the generalized double copy to generate a representation of maximally supersymmetric gravity as a functional of the planar SYM input. We discuss how the process might generalize, and then close by commenting on the applicability of this method for additional cases of interest where performing explicit unitarity cuts is expensive.

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arXiv2023

Higher-order tails and RG flows due to scattering of gravitational radiation from binary inspirals

We establish and develop a novel methodology to treat higher-order non-linear effects of gravitational radiation that is scattered from binary inspirals, which employs modern scattering-amplitudes methods on the effective picture of the binary as a composite particle. We spell out our procedure to study such effects: assembling tree amplitudes via generalized-unitarity methods and employing the closed-time-path formalism to derive the causal effective actions, which encompass the full conservative and dissipative dynamics. We push through to a new state of the art for these higher-order effects, up to the third subleading tail effect, at order G5N and the 5-loop level, which corresponds to the 8.5PN order. We formulate the consequent dissipated energy for these higher-order corrections, and carry out a renormalization analysis, where we uncover new subleading RG flow of the quadrupole coupling. For all higher-order tail effects we find perfect agreement with partial observable results in PN and self-force theories, where available.

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arXiv2023

Revealing the Landscape of Globally Color-Dual Multi-loop Integrands

We report on progress in understanding how to construct color-dual multi-loop amplitudes. First we identify a cubic theory, semi-abelian Yang-Mills, that unifies many of the color-dual theories studied in the literature, and provides a prescriptive approach for constructing $D$-dimensional color-dual numerators through one-loop directly from Feynman rules. By a simple weight counting argument, this approach does not further generalize to two-loops. As a first step in understanding the two-loop challenge, we use a $D$-dimensional color-dual bootstrap to successfully construct globally color-dual local two-loop four-point nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) numerators. The double-copy of these NLSM numerators with themselves, pure Yang-Mills, and $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills correctly reproduce the known unitarity constructed integrands of special Galileons, Born-Infeld theory, and Dirac-Born-Infeld-Volkov-Akulov theory, respectively. Applying our bootstrap to two-loop four-point pure Yang-Mills, we exhaustively search the space of local numerators and find that it fails to satisfy global color-kinematics duality, completing a search previously initiated in the literature. We pinpoint the failure to the bowtie unitarity cut, and discuss a path forward towards non-local construction of color-dual integrands at generic loop order.

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arXiv2022

Perfecting one-loop BCJ numerators in SYM and supergravity

We take a major step towards computing $D$-dimensional one-loop amplitudes in general gauge theories, compatible with the principles of unitarity and the color-kinematics duality. For $n$-point amplitudes with either supersymmetry multiplets or generic non-supersymmetric matter in the loop, simple all-multiplicity expressions are obtained for the maximal cuts of kinematic numerators of $n$-gon diagrams. At $n=6,7$ points with maximal supersymmetry, we extend the cubic-diagram numerators to encode all contact terms, and thus solve the long-standing problem of \emph{simultaneously} realizing the following properties: color-kinematics duality, manifest locality, optimal power counting of loop momenta, quadratic rather than linearized Feynman propagators, compatibility with double copy as well as all graph symmetries. Color-kinematics dual representations with similar properties are presented in the half-maximally supersymmetric case at $n=4,5$ points. The resulting gauge-theory integrands and their supergravity counterparts obtained from the double copy are checked to reproduce the expected ultraviolet divergences.

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arXiv2022

Color-kinematics dual representations of one-loop matrix elements in the open-superstring effective action

The $\alpha'$-expansion of string theory provides a rich set of higher-dimension operators, indexed by $\zeta$ values, which can be used to study color-kinematics duality and the double copy. These two powerful properties, actually first noticed in tree-level string amplitudes, simplify the construction of both gauge and gravity amplitudes. However, their applicability and limitations are not fully understood. We attempt to construct a set of color-kinematics dual numerators at one loop and four points for insertions of operator combinations corresponding to the lowest four $\zeta_2$-free operator insertions from the open superstring: $\zeta_3$, $\zeta_5$, $\zeta_3^2$, and $\zeta_7$. We succeed in finding a representation for the first three in terms of box, triangle, and bubble numerators. In the case of $\zeta_7$ we find an obstruction to a fully color-dual representation related to the bubble-on-external-leg type diagrams. We discuss two paths around this obstruction, both of which signal an incompatability between color-kinematics duality and manifesting certain desired properties. Using the constructed color-dual numerators, we find two different Bern-Carrasco-Johansson double copies that produce candidate closed-string-insertion numerators. Both approaches to the double copy match the kinematics of the cuts, with relative normalization set by either summing over both double copies including degeneracy or by including an explicit prefactor on the double-copy numerator definitions.

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arXiv2022

A tale of tails through generalized unitarity

We introduce a novel framework to study high-order gravitational effects on a binary from the scattering of its emitted gravitational radiation. Here we focus on the radiation-reaction due to the background of the binary's gravitational potential, namely on the so-called tail effects, as the starting point to this type of scattering effects. We start from the effective field theory of a binary composite-particle. Through multi-loop and generalized-unitarity methods, we derive the causal effective actions of the dynamical multipoles, the energy spectra, and the observable flux, due to these effects. We proceed through the third subleading such radiation-reaction effect, at the four-loop level and seventh order in post-Newtonian gravity, shedding new light on the higher-order effects, and pushing the state of the art.

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arXiv2021

Maximal Super-Yang-Mills at Six Loops via Novel Integrand Bootstrap

We construct the complete (planar and non-planar) integrand for the six-loop four-point amplitude in maximal $D\le10$ super-Yang-Mills. This construction employs new advances that combat the proliferation of diagram contributions and state sums when evaluating multi-loop $D$-dimensional unitarity cuts. Concretely, we introduce two graph-based approaches to evaluating generalized unitarity cuts in $D$ dimensions: 1) recursively from lower-loop cuts, or 2) directly from known higher-loop planar cuts. Neither method relies on explicit state sums or any sewing of tree-level amplitudes. These methods are based on identities that we expect to hold for a broad family of theories, including QCD and Einstein gravity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

One-loop matrix elements of effective superstring interactions: $\alpha'$-expanding loop integrands

In the low-energy effective action of string theories, non-abelian gauge interactions and supergravity are augmented by infinite towers of higher-mass-dimension operators. We propose a new method to construct one-loop matrix elements with insertions of operators $D^{2k} F^n$ and $D^{2k} R^n$ in the tree-level effective action of type-I and type-II superstrings. Inspired by ambitwistor string theories, our method is based on forward limits of moduli-space integrals using string tree-level amplitudes with two extra points, expanded in powers of the inverse string tension $\alpha'$. Similar to one-loop ambitwistor computations, intermediate steps feature non-standard linearized Feynman propagators which eventually recombine to conventional quadratic propagators. With linearized propagators the loop integrand of the matrix elements obey one-loop versions of the monodromy and KLT relations. We express a variety of four- and five-point examples in terms of quadratic propagators and formulate a criterion on the underlying genus-one correlation functions that should make this recombination possible at all orders in $\alpha'$. The ultraviolet divergences of the one-loop matrix elements are crosschecked against the non-separating degeneration of genus-one integrals in string amplitudes. Conversely, our results can be used as a constructive method to determine degenerations of elliptic multiple zeta values and modular graph forms at arbitrary weight.

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arXiv2020

One-loop Correlators and BCJ Numerators from Forward Limits

We present new formulas for one-loop ambitwistor-string correlators for gauge theories in any even dimension with arbitrary combinations of gauge bosons, fermions and scalars running in the loop. Our results are driven by new all-multiplicity expressions for tree-level two-fermion correlators in the RNS formalism that closely resemble the purely bosonic ones. After taking forward limits of tree-level correlators with an additional pair of fermions/bosons, one-loop correlators become combinations of Lorentz traces in vector and spinor representations. Identities between these two types of traces manifest all supersymmetry cancellations and the power counting of loop momentum. We also obtain parity-odd contributions from forward limits with chiral fermions. One-loop numerators satisfying the Bern-Carrasco-Johansson (BCJ) duality for diagrams with linearized propagators can be extracted from such correlators using the well-established tree-level techniques in Yang-Mills theory coupled to biadjoint scalars. Finally, we obtain streamlined expressions for BCJ numerators up to seven points using multiparticle fields.

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arXiv2020

Efficient Calculation of Crossing Symmetric BCJ Tree Numerators

In this paper, we propose an improved method for directly calculating double-copy-compatible tree numerators in (super-)Yang-Mills and Yang-Mills-scalar theories. Our new scheme gets rid of any explicit dependence on reference orderings, restoring a form of crossing symmetry to the numerators. This in turn improves the computational efficiency of the algorithm, allowing us to go well beyond the number of external particles accessible with the reference order based methods. Motivated by a parallel study of one-loop BCJ numerators from forward limits, we explore the generalization to include a pair of fermions. To improve the accessiblity of the new algorithm, we provide a Mathematica package that implements the numerator construction. The structure of the computation also provides for a straightforward introduction of minimally-coupled massive particles potentially useful for future computations in both classical and quantum gravity.

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arXiv2019

Gravity loop integrands from the ultraviolet

We demonstrate that loop integrands of (super-)gravity scattering amplitudes possess surprising properties in the ultraviolet (UV) region. In particular, we study the scaling of multi-particle unitarity cuts for asymptotically large momenta and expose an improved UV behavior of four-dimensional cuts through seven loops as compared to standard expectations. For N=8 supergravity, we show that the improved large momentum scaling combined with the behavior of the integrand under BCFW deformations of external kinematics uniquely fixes the loop integrands in a number of non-trivial cases. In the integrand construction, all scaling conditions are homogeneous. Therefore, the only required information about the amplitude is its vanishing at particular points in momentum space. This homogeneous construction gives indirect evidence for a new geometric picture for graviton amplitudes similar to the one found for planar N=4 super Yang-Mills theory. We also show how the behavior at infinity is related to the scaling of tree-level amplitudes under certain multi-line chiral shifts which can be used to construct new recursion relations.

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arXiv2018

Ultraviolet Properties of N = 8 Supergravity at Five Loops

We use the recently developed generalized double-copy construction to obtain an improved representation of the five-loop four-point integrand of $N = 8$ supergravity whose leading ultraviolet behavior we analyze using state of the art loop-integral expansion and reduction methods. We find that the five-loop critical dimension where ultraviolet divergences first occur is $D_c=24/5$, corresponding to a $D^8 R^4$ counterterm. This ultraviolet behavior stands in contrast to the cases of four-dimensional $N = 4$ supergravity at three loops and $N = 5$ supergravity at four loops whose improved ultraviolet behavior demonstrates enhanced cancellations beyond implications from standard-symmetry considerations. We express this $D_c=24/5$ divergence in terms of two relatively simple positive-definite integrals reminiscent of vacuum integrals, excluding any additional ultraviolet cancellations at this loop-order. We note nontrivial relations between the integrals describing this leading ultraviolet behavior and integrals describing lower-loop behavior. This observation suggests not only a path towards greatly simplifying future calculations at higher loops, but may even allow us to directly investigate ultraviolet behavior in terms of simplified integrals, avoiding the construction of complete integrands.

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arXiv2017

Curvature-Squared Multiplets, Evanescent Effects and the U(1) Anomaly in N = 4 Supergravity

We evaluate one-loop amplitudes of N = 4 supergravity in D dimensions using the double-copy procedure that expresses gravity integrands in terms of corresponding ones in Yang--Mills theory.We organize the calculation in terms of a set of gauge-invariant tensors, allowing us to identify evanescent contributions. Among the latter, we find the matrix elements of supersymmetric completions of curvature-squared operators. In addition, we find that such evanescent terms and the U(1)-anomalous contributions to one-loop N = 4 amplitudes are tightly intertwined. The appearance of evanescent operators in N = 4 supergravity and their relation to anomalies raises the question of their effect on the known four-loop divergence in this theory. We provide bases of gauge-invariant tensors and corresponding projectors useful for Yang--Mills theories as a by-product of our analysis.

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