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Gabriele Travaglini

Publications and source records attributed to Gabriele Travaglini.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2013

Two-loop Sudakov Form Factor in ABJM

We compute the two-loop Sudakov form factor in three-dimensional N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons theory, using generalised unitarity. As an intermediate step, we derive the non-planar part of the one-loop four-point amplitude in terms of box integrals. Our result for the Sudakov form factor is given by a single non-planar tensor integral with uniform degree of transcendentality, and is in agreement with the known infrared divergences of two-loop amplitudes in ABJM theory. We also discuss a number of interesting properties satisfied by related three-dimensional integral functions.

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arXiv2012

A note on amplitudes in N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons theory

We establish a connection between tree-level superamplitudes in ABJM theory and leading singularities associated to special three-particle cuts of one-loop superamplitudes where one of the tree amplitudes entering the cut is a four-point amplitude. Using these relations, we show that certain intriguing similarities between one-loop and tree-level superamplitudes observed recently become completely manifest. This connection is reminiscent of a similar relation in the maximally supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions, where the sum of two-mass hard and one-mass box coefficients of a one-loop amplitude equals the corresponding tree-level amplitude. As an application, we present a very simple re-derivation of the six-point superamplitude and calculate the eight-point superamplitude at one loop in ABJM theory.

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arXiv2012

All one-loop amplitudes in N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons theory

We exploit a recently found connection between special triple-cut diagrams and tree-level recursive diagrams to derive a general formula capturing the multi-particle factorisation of arbitrary one-loop amplitudes in the ABJM theory. This formula contains certain anomalous contributions which are reminiscent of the so-called non-factorising contributions appearing in the factorisation of one-loop amplitudes in four-dimensional gauge theory. In the second part of the paper we derive a recursion relation for the supercoefficients of one-loop amplitudes in ABJM theory. By applying this recursion relation, any one-loop supercoefficient can be reduced to special triple-cut diagrams involving at least one four-point tree amplitude. In turn, this implies that any one-loop supercoefficient can be derived from tree-level recursive diagrams.

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arXiv2012

Analytic two-loop form factors in N=4 SYM

We derive a compact expression for the three-point MHV form factors of half-BPS operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills at two loops. The main tools of our calculation are generalised unitarity applied at the form factor level, and the compact expressions for supersymmetric tree-level form factors and amplitudes entering the cuts. We confirm that infrared divergences exponentiate as expected, and that collinear factorisation is entirely captured by an ABDK/BDS ansatz. Next, we construct the two-loop remainder function obtained by subtracting this ansatz from the full two-loop form factor and compute it numerically. Using symbology, combined with various physical constraints and symmetries, we find a unique solution for its symbol. With this input we construct a remarkably compact analytic expression for the remainder function, which contains only classical polylogarithms, and compare it to our numerical results. Furthermore, we make the surprising observation that our remainder is equal to the maximally transcendental piece of a closely related two-loop amplitude in QCD.

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arXiv2011

Harmony of Super Form Factors

In this paper we continue our systematic study of form factors of half-BPS operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills. In particular, we extend various techniques known for amplitudes to the case of form factors, including MHV rules, recursion relations, unitarity and dual MHV rules. As an application, we present the solution of the recursion relation for split-helicity form factors. We then consider form factors of the stress-tensor multiplet operator and of its chiral truncation, and write down supersymmetric Ward identities using chiral as well as non-chiral superspace formalisms. This allows us to obtain compact formulae for families of form factors, such as the maximally non-MHV case. Finally we generalise dual MHV rules in dual momentum space to form factors.

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arXiv2011

Tree-Level Formalism

We review two novel techniques used to calculate tree-level scattering amplitudes efficiently: MHV diagrams, and on-shell recursion relations. For the MHV diagrams, we consider applications to tree-level amplitudes and focus in particular on the N=4 supersymmetric formulation. We also briefly describe the derivation of loop amplitudes using MHV diagrams. For the recursion relations, after presenting their general proof, we discuss several applications to massless theories with and without supersymmetry, to theories with massive particles, and to graviton amplitudes in General Relativity. This article is an invited review for a special issue of Journal of Physics A devoted to "Scattering Amplitudes in Gauge Theories".

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arXiv2010

Form Factors in N=4 Super Yang-Mills and Periodic Wilson Loops

We calculate form factors of half-BPS operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory at tree level and one loop using novel applications of recursion relations and unitarity. In particular, we determine the expression of the one-loop form factors with two scalars and an arbitrary number of positive-helicity gluons. These quantities resemble closely the MHV scattering amplitudes, including holomorphicity of the tree-level form factor, and the expansion in terms of two-mass easy box functions of the one-loop result. Next, we compare our result for these form factors to the calculation of a particular periodic Wilson loop at one loop, finding agreement. This suggests a novel duality relating form factors to periodic Wilson loops.

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arXiv2010

One-loop Amplitudes in Six-Dimensional (1,1) Theories from Generalised Unitarity

Recently, the spinor helicity formalism and on-shell superspace were developed for six-dimensional gauge theories with (1,1) supersymmetry. We combine these two techniques with (generalised) unitarity, which is a powerful technique to calculate scattering amplitudes in any massless theory. As an application we calculate one-loop superamplitudes with four and five external particles in the (1,1) theory and perform several consistency checks on our results.

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arXiv2010

A Note on Dual MHV Diagrams in N=4 SYM

Recently a reformulation of the MHV diagram method in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in momentum twistor space was presented and was shown to be equivalent to the perturbative expansion of the expectation value of a supersymmetric Wilson loop in momentum twistor space. In this note we present related explicit Feynman rules in dual momentum space, which should have the interpretation of Wilson loop diagrams in dual momentum space. We show that these novel rules are completely equivalent to ordinary spacetime MHV rules and can be naturally viewed as their graph dual representation.

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arXiv2010

Simplicity of Polygon Wilson Loops in N=4 SYM

Wilson loops with lightlike polygonal contours have been conjectured to be equivalent to MHV scattering amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills. We compute such Wilson loops for special polygonal contours at two loops in perturbation theory. Specifically, we concentrate on the remainder function R, obtained by subtracting the known ABDK/BDS ansatz from the Wilson loop. First, we consider a particular two-dimensional eight-point kinematics studied at strong coupling by Alday and Maldacena. We find numerical evidence that R is the same at weak and at strong coupling, up to an overall, coupling-dependent constant. This suggests a universality of the remainder function at strong and weak coupling for generic null polygonal Wilson loops, and therefore for arbitrary MHV amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills. We analyse the consequences of this statement. We further consider regular n-gons, and find that the remainder function is linear in n at large n through numerical computations performed up to n=30. This reproduces a general feature of the corresponding strong-coupling result.

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arXiv2010

Two-Loop Polygon Wilson Loops in N=4 SYM

We compute for the first time the two-loop corrections to arbitrary n-gon lightlike Wilson loops in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, using efficient numerical methods. The calculation is motivated by the remarkable agreement between the finite part of planar six-point MHV amplitudes and hexagon Wilson loops which has been observed at two loops. At n=6 we confirm that the ABDK/BDS ansatz must be corrected by adding a remainder function, which depends only on conformally invariant ratios of kinematic variables. We numerically compute remainder functions for n=7,8 and verify dual conformal invariance. Furthermore, we study simple and multiple collinear limits of the Wilson loop remainder functions and demonstrate that they have precisely the form required by the collinear factorisation of the corresponding two-loop n-point amplitudes. The number of distinct diagram topologies contributing to the n-gon Wilson loops does not increase with n, and there is a fixed number of "master integrals", which we have computed. Thus we have essentially computed general polygon Wilson loops, and if the correspondence with amplitudes continues to hold, all planar n-point two-loop MHV amplitudes in the N=4 theory.

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arXiv2010

A Surprise in the Amplitude/Wilson Loop Duality

One of the many remarkable features of MHV scattering amplitudes is their conjectured equality to lightlike polygon Wilson loops, which apparently holds at all orders in perturbation theory as well as non-perturbatively. This duality is usually expressed in terms of purely four-dimensional quantities obtained by appropriate subtraction of the IR and UV divergences from amplitudes and Wilson loops respectively. In this paper we demonstrate, by explicit calculation, the completely unanticipated fact that the equality continues to hold at two loops through order epsilon in dimensional regularization for both the four-particle amplitude and the (parity-even part of the) five-particle amplitude.

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arXiv2009

A Note on Loop Amplitudes in QED

We consider the two-loop four-point amplitude in N=2 super QED, and show that there exists an approximate recursive structure similar to that captured by the ABDK/BDS ansatz for MHV amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills. Furthermore, we present a simple relation between the box coefficients of one-loop photon MHV amplitudes in (super) QED, and sums of box coefficients of one-loop MHV amplitudes in (super) Yang-Mills.

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arXiv2009

One-loop N=8 supergravity coefficients from N=4 super Yang-Mills

We use supersymmetric generalised unitarity to calculate supercoefficients of box functions in the expansion of scattering amplitudes in N=8 supergravity at one loop. Recent advances have presented tree-level amplitudes in N=8 supergravity in terms of sums of terms containing squares of colour-ordered Yang-Mills superamplitudes. We develop the consequences of these results for the structure of one-loop supercoefficients, recasting them as sums of squares of N=4 Yang-Mills expressions with certain coefficients inherited from the tree-level superamplitudes. This provides new expressions for all one-loop box coefficients in N=8 supergravity, which we check against known results in a number of cases.

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arXiv2009

One-Loop Amplitudes in N=4 Super Yang-Mills and Anomalous Dual Conformal Symmetry

We discuss what predictions can be made for one-loop superamplitudes in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory by using anomalous dual conformal symmetry. We show that the anomaly coefficient is a specific combination of two-mass hard and one-mass supercoefficients which appears in the supersymmetric on-shell recursion relations and equals the corresponding tree-level superamplitude. We discuss further novel relations among supercoefficients imposed by the remaining non-anomalous part of the symmetry. In particular, we find that all one-loop supercoefficients, except the four-mass box coefficients, can be expressed as linear combinations of three-mass box coefficients and a particular symmetric combination of two-mass hard coefficients. We check that our equations are explicitly satisfied in the case of one-loop n-point MHV and NMHV amplitudes. As a bonus, we prove the covariance of the NMHV superamplitudes at an arbitrary number of points, extending previous results at n <= 9.

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arXiv2008

From Trees to Loops and Back

We argue that generic one-loop scattering amplitudes in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories can be computed equivalently with MHV diagrams or with Feynman diagrams. We first present a general proof of the covariance of one-loop non-MHV amplitudes obtained from MHV diagrams. This proof relies only on the local character in Minkowski space of MHV vertices and on an application of the Feynman Tree Theorem. We then show that the discontinuities of one-loop scattering amplitudes computed with MHV diagrams are precisely the same as those computed with standard methods. Furthermore, we analyse collinear limits and soft limits of generic non-MHV amplitudes in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with one-loop MHV diagrams. In particular, we find a simple explicit derivation of the universal one-loop splitting functions in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories to all orders in the dimensional regularisation parameter, which is in complete agreement with known results. Finally, we present concrete and illustrative applications of Feynman's Tree Theorem to one-loop MHV diagrams as well as to one-loop Feynman diagrams.

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arXiv2008

Four-point Amplitudes in N=8 Supergravity and Wilson Loops

Prompted by recent progress in the study of N=4 super Yang-Mills amplitudes, and evidence that similar approaches might be relevant to N=8 supergravity, we investigate possible iterative structures and applications of Wilson loop techniques in maximal supergravity. We first consider the two-loop, four-point MHV scattering amplitude in N=8 supergravity, confirming that the infrared divergent parts exponentiate, and we give the explicit expression which represents the failure for this to occur for the finite part. We observe that each term in the expansion of the one- and two-loop amplitudes in the dimensional regularisation parameter epsilon has a uniform degree of transcendentality. We then turn to consider Wilson loops in supergravity, showing that a natural definition of the loop, involving the Christoffel connection, fails to reproduce the one-loop amplitude. An alternative expression, which involves the metric explicitly, is shown to have a close relationship with the physical amplitude. We find that in a gauge in which the cusp diagrams vanish, the remaining diagrams for this Wilson loop correctly generate the full one-loop, four-point N=8 supergravity amplitude.

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