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William J. Torres Bobadilla

Publications and source records attributed to William J. Torres Bobadilla.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Helicity amplitudes in massless QED to higher orders in the dimensional regulator

We analytically calculate one- and two-loop helicity amplitudes in massless QED, by adopting a four-dimensional tensor decomposition. We draw our attention to four-fermion and Compton scattering processes to higher orders in the dimensional regulator, as required for theoretical predictions at N$^3$LO. We organise loop amplitudes by proposing an efficient algorithm at integrand level to group Feynman graphs into integral families. We study the singular structure of these amplitudes and discuss the correspondence between QED and QCD processes. We present our results in terms of generalised polylogarithms up to transcendental weight six.

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Six-loop gravitational interactions at the sixth post-Newtonian order

We compute the gravitational interaction of two coalescing compact objects at sixth post-Newtonian order in the static limit, employing the diagrammatic approach within the effective field theory framework of General Relativity. The calculation requires the evaluation of six-loop Feynman diagrams that are mapped onto two-point integrals with a gauge-theory-like structure, which are computed here for the first time. The resulting seventh-order contribution in Newton's constant is finite in three space dimensions. This result provides the most technically demanding missing ingredient for the determination of the conservative dynamics of the gravitational two-body system at sixth post-Newtonian order.

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Higgs Boson Pair Production via Gluon Fusion: Higher-Order Corrections and Theoretical Uncertainties

In this contribution, the higher-order QCD and electroweak corrections to Standard Model Higgs boson pair production via the gluon-fusion mechanism, $gg\to hh$, are summarized and the different sources of theoretical uncertainty are assessed. The discussion includes finite top quark mass effects, matching to parton showers, approximate NNLO and N$^3$LO QCD corrections, NLO electroweak effects, and uncertainties associated with the top quark mass scheme and perturbative scale choices. In addition, we provide an updated state-of-the-art recommendation for the inclusive gluon-fusion Higgs boson pair production cross section and the corresponding Higgs boson pair invariant-mass distribution.

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First look at the evaluation of two-loop Feynman integrals for radiative return processes

Precision studies of radiative return processes at low-energy electron--positron colliders require next-to-next-to-leading order QED predictions retaining full dependence on the electron mass. We present the calculation of planar two-loop four-point Feynman integrals relevant for initial-state radiation contributions to these processes. The calculation presents considerable analytical complexity, due to the presence of a nested square root and of integrals associated with elliptic geometries. We construct differential equations for the Feynman integrals which are polynomial in the dimensional regulator, and are suitable for numerical integration. We demonstrate stable numerical evaluations throughout the physical region relevant for low-energy experiments, despite the presence of large hierarchies of scales. Our results provide essential building blocks for NNLO predictions for radiative return processes.

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Electroweak corrections to Higgs boson pair production: The quark channel

We present the mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to Higgs boson pair production in the quark-antiquark channel. The virtual amplitudes are computed fully analytically using the method of differential equations. We determine the integration constants by matching our expressions to the large mass expansion limit of the canonical integrals. We implement the results in the POWHEG-BOX framework for phenomenological studies. The corrections are found to have a significant impact on the shapes of differential cross sections, reaching up to +10% for the invariant mass distribution of the Higgs boson pair near the production threshold. This channel has not been considered before in calculations of the next-to-leading order electroweak corrections to Higgs boson pair production.

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Tensor decomposition of $e^+e^-\toπ^+π^-γ$ to higher orders in the dimensional regulator

We present a first study of the scattering process $e^+ e^-\toπ^+π^-γ$ beyond next-to-leading order, aimed at providing preliminary insights required for future NNLO predictions for radiative return processes. A complete four-dimensional tensor decomposition of the amplitude is developed, and the associated one-loop polarised amplitudes are evaluated analytically to higher orders in the dimensional regulator, as required for NNLO accuracy. The calculation is complemented by an efficient numerical framework for the evaluation of the resulting five-point Feynman integrals, enabling stable and fast evaluations across the physical production region with evaluation times of a few hundreds of milliseconds. These results are suitable for implementation in Monte Carlo event generators.

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Radiative return meets GVMD

We improve the description of pion-photon interactions in the radiative return process $e^+e^-\to π^+π^-γ$ at the next-to-leading order by including the pion form factor in the Feynman rules. We present a general calculation of the new amplitudes, and provide an implementation easy to interface with any Monte Carlo generator. We incorporate this framework into the event generator $\texttt{Phokhara}$ and study several experimental configurations. Overall, we find percent-level effects appearing in angular differential cross section distributions at colliders whose centre-of-mass energies lie near the peak of the pion form factor. By contrast, total cross sections and distributions in charge-even variables show effects only at the permille level, or no visible differences at all. Finally, we compare the new predictions with KLOE measurements of the forward-backward asymmetry in order to assess the predictive power of the modifications.

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Three-loop helicity amplitudes of four-lepton scattering in QED

We present the analytic expressions of the three-loop virtual corrections to the helicity amplitudes of 2 -> 2 four-fermion scattering processes in massless QED. The contributing Feynman diagrams are grouped into integrand families characterised by independent Symanzik polynomials and decomposed in terms of master integrals using an optimised integration-by-parts strategy. Upon the renormalisation of the ultraviolet divergences and the extraction of the universal infrared pole structure, the finite results are expressed in terms of generalised polylogarithms up to transcendental weight six. Amplitudes for dimuon production in electron-positron annihilations, electron-muon scattering, and Bhabha scattering are explicitly derived.

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NLO QCD corrections to the electroweak production of a Higgs boson pair in the quark-antiquark channel

Higgs boson pair production in the massless quark-antiquark channel proceeds at leading order (LO) via electroweak boson loops. We calculate the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to this process. For the corresponding two-loop amplitudes, an analytic representation has been achieved. Even though the size of this contribution at the level of total cross sections is below 1% compared to the LO gluon channel, the effect on differential observables can be in the 10% range and therefore this contribution should be taken into account when comparing to LHC data.

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Landau and leading singularities in arbitrary space-time dimensions

Using the decomposition of the $D$-dimensional space-time into parallel and perpendicular subspaces, we study and prove a connection between Landau and leading singularities for $N$-point one-loop Feynman integrals by applying multi-dimensional theory of residues. We show that if $D=N$ and $D=N+1$, the leading singularity corresponds to the inverse of the square root of the leading Landau singularity of the first and second type, respectively. We make use of this outcome to systematically provide differential equations of Feynman integrals in canonical forms and the extension of the connection of these singularities at multi-loop level by exploiting the loop-by-loop approach. Illustrative examples with the calculation of Landau and leading singularities are provided to supplement our results.

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Fast evaluation of Feynman integrals for Monte Carlo generators

Building on the idea of numerically integrating differential equations satisfied by Feynman integrals, we propose a novel strategy for handling branch cuts within a numerical framework. We develop an integrator capable of evaluating a basis of integrals in both double and quadruple precision, achieving significantly reduced computational times compared to existing tools. We demonstrate the performance of our integrator by evaluating one- and two-loop five-point Feynman integrals with up to nine complex kinematic scales. In particular, we apply our method to the radiative return process of massive electron-positron annihilation into pions plus an energetic photon within scalar QED, for which we also build the differential equation, and extend it to the case where virtual photons acquire an auxiliary complex mass under the Generalised Vector-Meson Dominance model. Furthermore, we validate our approach on two integral families relevant for the two-loop production of $t\bar{t}+\text{jet}$. The integrator achieves, in double precision, execution times of the order of milliseconds for one-loop topologies and hundreds of milliseconds for the two-loop families, enabling for on-the-fly computation of Feynman integrals in Monte Carlo generators and a more efficient generation of grids for the topologies with prohibitive computational costs.

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Differential Space of Feynman Integrals: Annihilators and $\mathcal{D}$-module

We present a novel algorithm for constructing differential operators with respect to external variables that annihilate Feynman-like integrals and give rise to the associated $\mathcal{D}$-modules, based on Griffiths-Dwork reduction. By leveraging the Macaulay matrix method, we derive corresponding relations among partial differential operators, including systems of Pfaffian equations and Picard-Fuchs operators. Our computational approach is applicable to twisted period integrals in projective coordinates, and we showcase its application to Feynman graphs and Witten diagrams. The method yields annihilators and their algebraic relations for generic regulator values, explicitly avoiding contributions from surface terms. In the cases examined, we observe that the holonomic rank of the $\mathcal{D}$-modules coincides with the dimension of the corresponding de Rham co-homology groups, indicating an equivalence relation between them, which we propose as a conjecture.

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Radiative corrections and Monte Carlo tools for low-energy hadronic cross sections in $e^+ e^-$ collisions

We present the results of Phase I of an ongoing review of Monte Carlo tools relevant for low-energy hadronic cross sections. This includes a detailed comparison of Monte Carlo codes for electron-positron scattering into a muon pair, pion pair, and electron pair, for scan and radiative-return experiments. After discussing the various approaches that are used and effects that are included, we show differential cross sections obtained with AfkQed, BabaYaga@NLO, KKMC, MCGPJ, McMule, Phokhara, and Sherpa, for scenarios that are inspired by experiments providing input for the dispersive evaluation of the hadronic vacuum polarisation.

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Two-loop light-quark Electroweak corrections to Higgs boson pair production in gluon fusion

We compute two-loop electroweak corrections to double Higgs boson production in gluon fusion mediated by light quarks in a fully analytical way. We determine a basis of master integrals satisfying canonical differential equations in $\mathrm{d}\log$ form, enhanced by subsequent rotations to remove unnecessary functions that do not appear in the analytic expressions of the amplitudes. We determine the integration constants by matching our expressions to the large mass expansion limit of the canonical integrals. We express the solution of differential equations in terms of Chen iterated integrals up to transcendental weight six over logarithmic kernels with algebraic arguments, and further decompose them by employing a basis of uniform weight functions. By deriving differential equations for such basis, we provide numerical results as well as routines for optimised numerical evaluations.

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Graded transcendental functions: an application to four-point amplitudes with one off-shell leg

Several recent works have demonstrated the powerful algebraic simplifications that can be achieved for scattering amplitudes through a systematic grading of transcendental quantities. We develop these concepts to construct a minimal basis of functions tailored to a scattering amplitude in a general way. Starting with formal solutions for all master integral topologies, we organise the appearing functions by properties such as their symbol alphabet or letter adjacency. We rotate the basis such that functions with spurious features appear in the least possible number of basis elements. Since their coefficients must vanish for physical quantities, this approach avoids complex cancellations. As a first application, we evaluate all integral topologies relevant to the three-loop $Hggg$ and $Hgq\bar{q}$ amplitudes in the leading-colour approximation and heavy-top limit. We describe the derivation of canonical differential equation systems and present a method for fixing boundary conditions without the need for a full functional representation. Using multiple numerical reductions, we test the maximal transcendentality conjecture for $Hggg$ and identify a new letter which appears in functions of weight 4 and 5. In addition, we provide the first direct analytic computation of a three-point form factor of the operator $\mathrm{Tr}(ϕ^2)$ in planar $\mathcal{N}=4$ sYM and find agreement with numerical and bootstrapped results.

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Vacuum amplitudes and time-like causal unitary in the loop-tree duality

We present the first proof-of-concept application to decay processes at higher perturbative orders of LTD causal unitary, a novel methodology that exploits the causal properties of vacuum amplitudes in the loop-tree duality (LTD) and is directly well-defined in the four physical dimensions of the space-time. The generation of loop- and tree-level contributions to the differential decay rates from a kernel multiloop vacuum amplitude is shown in detail, and explicit expressions are presented for selected processes that are suitable for a lightweight understanding of the method. Specifically, we provide a clear physical interpretation of the local cancellation of soft, collinear and threshold singularities, and of the local renormalisation of ultraviolet singularities. The presentation is illustrated with numerical results that showcase the advantages of the method.

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Analytic evaluation of the three-loop three-point form factor of $\operatorname{tr}ϕ^3$ in $\mathcal{N}=4$ sYM

We compute analytically the three-loop correlation function of the local operator $\text{tr} \, ϕ^3$ inserted into three on-shell states, in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. The result is expressed in terms of Chen iterated integrals. We also present our result using generalised polylogarithms, and evaluate them numerically, finding agreement with a previous numerical result in the literature. We observe that the result depends on fewer kinematic singularities compared to individual Feynman integrals. Furthermore, upon choosing a suitable definition of the finite part, we find that the latter satisfies powerful symbol adjacency relations similar to those previously observed for the $\text{tr} \, ϕ^2$ case.

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First look at the evaluation of three-loop non-planar Feynman diagrams for Higgs plus jet production

We present new computations for Feynman integrals relevant to Higgs plus jet production at three loops, including first results for a non-planar class of integrals. The results are expressed in terms of generalised polylogarithms up to transcendental weight six. We also provide the full canonical differential equations, which allows us to make structural observations on the answer. In particular, we find a counterexample to previously conjectured adjacency relations, for a planar integral of the tennis-court type. Additionally, for a non-planar triple ladder diagram, we find two novel alphabet letters. This information may be useful for future bootstrap approaches.

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