No Arabic abstract
As a test of the gluon scattering amplitude/Wilson loop duality, we evaluate the hexagonal light-like Wilson loop at two loops in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory. We compare its finite part to the Bern-Dixon-Smirnov (BDS) conjecture for the finite part of the six-gluon amplitude. We find that the two expressions have the same behavior in the collinear limit, but they differ by a non-trivial function of the three (dual) conformally invariant variables. This implies that either the BDS conjecture or the gluon amplitude/Wilson loop duality fails for the six-gluon amplitude, starting from two loops. Our results are in qualitative agreement with the analysis of Alday and Maldacena of scattering amplitudes with infinitely many external gluons.
A recent, integrability-based conjecture in the framework of the Wilson loop OPE for N=4 SYM theory, predicts the leading OPE contribution for the hexagon MHV remainder function and NMHV ratio function to all loops, in integral form. We prove that these integrals evaluate to a particular basis of harmonic polylogarithms, at any order in the weak coupling expansion. The proof constitutes an algorithm for the direct computation of the integrals, which we employ in order to obtain the full (N)MHV OPE contribution in question up to 6 loops, and certain parts of it up to 12 loops. We attach computer-readable files with our results, as well as an algorithm implementation which may be readily used to generate higher-loop corrections. The feasibility of obtaining the explicit kinematical dependence of the first term in the OPE in principle at arbitrary loop order, offers promise for the suitability of this approach as a non-perturbative description of Wilson loops/scattering amplitudes.
We give a representation of the parity-even part of the planar two-loop six-gluon MHV amplitude of N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory, in terms of loop-momentum integrals with simple dual conformal properties. We evaluate the integrals numerically in order to test directly the ABDK/BDS all-loop ansatz for planar MHV amplitudes. We find that the ansatz requires an additive remainder function, in accord with previous indications from strong-coupling and Regge limits. The planar six-gluon amplitude can also be compared with the hexagonal Wilson loop computed by Drummond, Henn, Korchemsky and Sokatchev in arXiv:0803.1466 [hep-th]. After accounting for differing singularities and other constants independent of the kinematics, we find that the Wilson loop and MHV-amplitude remainders are identical, to within our numerical precision. This result provides non-trivial confirmation of a proposed n-point equivalence between Wilson loops and planar MHV amplitudes, and suggests that an additional mechanism besides dual conformal symmetry fixes their form at six points and beyond.
We compute the six-dimensional hexagon integral with three non-adjacent external masses analytically. After a simple rescaling, it is given by a function of six dual conformally invariant cross-ratios. The result can be expressed as a sum of 24 terms involving only one basic function, which is a simple linear combination of logarithms, dilogarithms, and trilogarithms of uniform degree three transcendentality. Our method uses differential equations to determine the symbol of the function, and an algorithm to reconstruct the latter from its symbol. It is known that six-dimensional hexagon integrals are closely related to scattering amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, and we therefore expect our result to be helpful for understanding the structure of scattering amplitudes in this theory, in particular at two loops.
We consider the hexagonal Wilson loop dual to the six-point MHV amplitude in planar N=4 super Yang-Mills theory. We apply constraints from the operator product expansion in the near-collinear limit to the symbol of the remainder function at three loops. Using these constraints, and assuming a natural ansatz for the symbols entries, we determine the symbol up to just two undetermined constants. In the multi-Regge limit, both constants drop out from the symbol, enabling us to make a non-trivial confirmation of the BFKL prediction for the leading-log approximation. This result provides a strong consistency check of both our ansatz for the symbol and the duality between Wilson loops and MHV amplitudes. Furthermore, we predict the form of the full three-loop remainder function in the multi-Regge limit, beyond the leading-log approximation, up to a few constants representing terms not detected by the symbol. Our results confirm an all-loop prediction for the real part of the remainder function in multi-Regge 3-->3 scattering. In the multi-Regge limit, our result for the remainder function can be expressed entirely in terms of classical polylogarithms. For generic six-point kinematics other functions are required.
We present the three-loop remainder function, which describes the scattering of six gluons in the maximally-helicity-violating configuration in planar N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory, as a function of the three dual conformal cross ratios. The result can be expressed in terms of multiple Goncharov polylogarithms. We also employ a more restricted class of hexagon functions which have the correct branch cuts and certain other restrictions on their symbols. We classify all the hexagon functions through transcendental weight five, using the coproduct for their Hopf algebra iteratively, which amounts to a set of first-order differential equations. The three-loop remainder function is a particular weight-six hexagon function, whose symbol was determined previously. The differential equations can be integrated numerically for generic values of the cross ratios, or analytically in certain kinematics limits, including the near-collinear and multi-Regge limits. These limits allow us to impose constraints from the operator product expansion and multi-Regge factorization directly at the function level, and thereby to fix uniquely a set of Riemann-zeta-valued constants that could not be fixed at the level of the symbol. The near-collinear limits agree precisely with recent predictions by Basso, Sever and Vieira based on integrability. The multi-Regge limits agree with the factorization formula of Fadin and Lipatov, and determine three constants entering the impact factor at this order. We plot the three-loop remainder function for various slices of the Euclidean region of positive cross ratios, and compare it to the two-loop one. For large ranges of the cross ratios, the ratio of the three-loop to the two-loop remainder function is relatively constant, and close to -7.