English

Scattering in Instanton Backgrounds

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-02-20 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

In this letter we evaluate one-loop all-plus gluon amplitudes of SU(Nc)\mathrm{SU}(N_c) gauge theory with NfN_f fundamental fermions in the presence of a flavour instanton background. Fermion zero modes are regulated with a chiral mass term. This computation is performed by cancelling a twistorial 't Hooft anomaly via the Green-Schwarz mechanism. We find that the trace-ordered amplitude has the form of a Parke-Taylor factor multiplied by the Fourier transform of the instanton density evaluated on the total momentum of the gluons. A background flavour instanton modifies the leading soft gluon and photon theorem, generating a level equal to twice the instanton charge in the soft Kac-Moody symmetry. We discuss the implications of our results for amplitudes in the presence of dynamical instantons.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.17538,
  title  = {Scattering in Instanton Backgrounds},
  author = {Roland Bittleston and Kevin Costello},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.17538},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages + 8 pages supplementary material

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:43:10.790Z