No Arabic abstract
We show that one-loop amplitudes in massless gauge theories can be determined from single cuts. By cutting a single propagator and putting it on-shell, the integrand of an n-point one-loop integral is transformed into an (n+2)-particle tree level amplitude. The single-cut approach described here is complementary to the double or multiple unitarity cut approaches commonly used in the literature. In common with these approaches, if the cut is taken in four dimensions, one finds only the cut-constructible parts of the amplitude, while if the cut is in D=4-2 epsilon dimensions, both rational and cut-constructible parts are obtained. We test our method by reproducing the known results for the fully rational all-plus and mostly-plus QCD amplitudes A^{(1)}_4(1^+,2^+,3^+,4^+) and A^{(1)}_5(1^+,2^+,3^+,4^+,5^+). We also rederive expressions for the scalar loop contribution to the four-gluon MHV amplitude, A_4^{(1,N=0)}(-,-,+,+) which has both cut-constructible and rational contributions, and the fully cut-constructible n-gluon MHV amplitude in N=4 Supersymetric Yang-Mills, A_4^{(1,N=4)}(-,-,+,...,+).
We develop an iterative method for constructing four-dimensional generalized unitarity cuts in $mathcal{N} = 2$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory coupled to fundamental matter hypermultiplets ($mathcal{N} = 2$ SQCD). For iterated two-particle cuts,specifically those involving only four-point amplitudes, this implies simple diagrammatic rules for assembling the cuts to any loop order, reminiscent of the rung rule in $mathcal{N} = 4$ SYM. By identifying physical poles, the construction simplifies the task of extracting complete integrands. In combination with the duality between color and kinematics we construct all four-point massless MHV-sector scattering amplitudes up to two loops in $mathcal{N} = 2$ SQCD, including those with matter on external legs. Our results reveal chiral infrared-finite integrands closely related to those found using loop-level BCFW recursion. The integrands are valid in $Dleq 6$ dimensions with external states in a four-dimensional subspace; the upper bound is dictated by our use of six-dimensional chiral $mathcal{N} = (1,0)$ SYM as a means of dimensionally regulating loop integrals.
We explain how one-loop amplitudes with massive fermions can be computed using only on-shell information. We first use the spinor-helicity formalism in six dimensions to perform generalised unitarity cuts in $d$ dimensions. We then show that divergent wavefunction cuts can be avoided, and the remaining ambiguities in the renormalised amplitudes can be fixed, by matching to universal infrared poles in $4-2epsilon$ dimensions and ultraviolet poles in $6-2epsilon$ dimensions. In the latter case we construct an effective Lagrangian in six dimensions and reduce the additional constraint to an on-shell tree-level computation.
We compute a complete set of independent leading-color two-loop five-parton amplitudes in QCD. These constitute a fundamental ingredient for the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to three-jet production at hadron colliders. We show how to consistently consider helicity amplitudes with external fermions in dimensional regularization, allowing the application of a numerical variant of the unitarity approach. Amplitudes are computed by exploiting a decomposition of the integrand into master and surface terms that is independent of the parton type. Master integral coefficients are numerically computed in either finite-field or floating-point arithmetic and combined with known analytic master integrals. We recompute two-loop leading-color four-parton amplitudes as a check of our implementation. Results are presented for all independent four- and five-parton processes including contributions with massless closed fermion loops.
Recent progress in unitarity techniques for one-loop scattering amplitudes makes a numerical implementation of this method possible. We present a 4-dimensional unitarity method for calculating the cut-constructible part of amplitudes and implement the method in a numerical procedure. Our technique can be applied to any one-loop scattering amplitude and offers the possibility that one-loop calculations can be performed in an automatic fashion, as tree-level amplitudes are currently done. Instead of individual Feynman diagrams, the ingredients for our one-loop evaluation are tree-level amplitudes, which are often already known. To study the practicality of this method we evaluate the cut-constructible part of the 4, 5 and 6 gluon one-loop amplitudes numerically, using the analytically known 4, 5 and 6 gluon tree-level amplitudes. Comparisons with analytic answers are performed to ascertain the numerical accuracy of the method.
We consider $alpha$ corrections to the one-loop four-point correlator of the stress-tensor multiplet in $mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills at order $1/N^4$. Holographically, this is dual to string corrections of the one-loop supergravity amplitude on AdS$_5times$S$^5$. While this correlator has been considered in Mellin space before, we derive the corresponding position space results, gaining new insights into the analytic structure of AdS loop-amplitudes. Most notably, the presence of a transcendental weight three function involving new singularities is required, which has not appeared in the context of AdS amplitudes before. We thereby confirm the structure of string corrected one-loop Mellin amplitudes, and also provide new explicit results at orders in $alpha$ not considered before.