We review some of the modern approaches to scattering amplitude computations in QCD and their application to precision LHC phenomenology. We emphasise the usefulness of momentum twistor variables in parameterising general amplitudes.
We establish a simple formula for the minimal dimension of operators leading to any helicity amplitude. It eases the systematic enumeration of independent operators from the construction of massless non-factorizable on-shell amplitudes. Little-group constraints can then be solved algorithmically for each helicity configuration to extract a complete set of spinor structures with lowest dimension. Occasionally, further reduction using momentum conservation, on-shell conditions and Schouten identities is required. A systematic procedure to account for the latter is presented. Dressing spinor structures with dot products of momenta finally yields the independent Lorentz structures for each helicity amplitude. We apply these procedures to amplitudes involving particles of spins 0,1/2,1,2. Spin statistics and elementary selection rules due to gauge symmetry lead to an enumeration of operators involving gravitons and standard-model particles, in the effective field theory denoted GRSMEFT. We also list the independent spinor structures generated by operators involving standard-model particles only. In both cases, we cover operators of dimension up to eight.
We apply on-shell methods to the bottom-up construction of electroweak amplitudes, allowing for both renormalizable and non-renormalizable interactions. We use the little-group covariant massive-spinor formalism, and flesh out some of its details along the way. Thanks to the compact form of the resulting amplitudes, many of their properties, and in particular the constraints of perturbative unitarity, are easily seen in this formalism. Our approach is purely bottom-up, assuming just the standard-model electroweak spectrum as well as the conservation of electric charge and fermion number. The most general massive three-point amplitudes consistent with these symmetries are derived and studied in detail, as the primary building blocks for the construction of scattering amplitudes. We employ a simple argument, based on tree-level unitarity of four-point amplitudes, to identify the three-point amplitudes that are non-renormalizable at tree level. This bottom-up analysis remarkably reproduces many low-energy relations implied by electroweak symmetry through the standard-model Higgs mechanism and beyond it. We then discuss four-point amplitudes. The gluing of three-point amplitudes into four-point amplitudes in the massive spinor helicity formalism is clarified. As an example, we work out the $psi^c psi Zh$ amplitude, including also the non-factorizable part. The latter is an all-order expression in the effective-field-theory expansion. Further constraints on the couplings are obtained by requiring perturbative unitarity. In the $psi^c psi Zh$ example, one for instance obtains the renormalizable-level relations between vector and fermion masses and gauge and Yukawa couplings. We supplement our bottom-up derivations with a matching of three- and four-point amplitude coefficients onto the standard-model effective field theory (SMEFT) in the broken electroweak phase.
Beyond standard model (BSM) particles should be included in effective field theory in order to compute the scattering amplitudes involving these extra particles. We formulate an extension of Higgs effective field theory which contains arbitrary number of scalar and fermion fields with arbitrary electric and chromoelectric charges. The BSM Higgs sector is described by using the non-linear sigma model in a manner consistent with the spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking. The chiral order counting rule is arranged consistently with the loop expansion. The leading order Lagrangian is organized in accord with the chiral order counting rule. We use a geometrical language to describe the particle interactions. The parametrization redundancy in the effective Lagrangian is resolved by describing the on-shell scattering amplitudes only with the covariant quantities in the scalar/fermion field space. We introduce a useful coordinate (normal coordinate), which simplifies the computations of the on-shell amplitudes significantly. We show the high energy behaviors of the scattering amplitudes determine the curvature tensors in the scalar/fermion field space. The massive spinor-wavefunction formalism is shown to be useful in the computations of on-shell helicity amplitudes.
In this talk we review the recent computation of the five- and six-gluon two-loop amplitudes in Yang-Mills theory using local integrands which make the infrared pole structure manifest. We make some remarks on the connection with BCJ relations and the all-multiplicity structure.
We analyse the high-energy limit of the gluon-gluon scattering amplitude in QCD, and display an intriguing relation between the finite parts of the one-loop gluon impact factor and the finite parts of the two-loop Regge trajectory.