English

Amplitudes at Infinity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2019-03-27 v1

Abstract

We investigate the asymptotically large loop-momentum behavior of multi-loop amplitudes in maximally supersymmetric quantum field theories in four dimensions. We check residue-theorem identities among color-dressed leading singularities in N=4\mathcal{N}=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory to demonstrate the absence of poles at infinity of all MHV amplitudes through three loops. Considering the same test for N=8\mathcal{N}=8 supergravity leads us to discover that this theory does support non-vanishing residues at infinity starting at two loops, and the degree of these poles grow arbitrarily with multiplicity. This causes a tension between simultaneously manifesting ultraviolet finiteness---which would be automatic in a representation obtained by color-kinematic duality---and gauge invariance---which would follow from unitarity-based methods.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.11185,
  title  = {Amplitudes at Infinity},
  author = {Jacob L. Bourjaily and Enrico Herrmann and Jaroslav Trnka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.11185},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

4+1+1 pages; 15 figures; details provided in ancillary Mathematica files

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:58:22.292Z