Related papers: Twistor theory at fifty: from contour integrals to…

This essay presents a critical evaluation of the concepts of string theory and its impact on particle physics. The point of departure is a historical review of four decades of ST within the broader context of six decades of failed attempts…

Geometry of the solution space of the self-dual Yang-Mills (SDYM) equations in Euclidean four-dimensional space is studied. Combining the twistor and group-theoretic approaches, we describe the full infinite-dimensional symmetry group of…

We describe a topological string theory which reproduces many aspects of the 1/N expansion of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory in two spacetime dimensions in the zero coupling (A=0) limit. The string theory is a modified version of topological…

We show how the description of a shear-free ray congruence in Minkowski space as an evolving family of semi-conformal mappings can naturally be formulated on a finite graph. For this, we introduce the notion of holomorphic function on a…

Witten's twistor string theory gives rise to an enigmatic formula [arXiv:hep-th/0403190] known as the "connected prescription" for tree-level Yang-Mills scattering amplitudes. We derive a link representation for the connected prescription…

We propose a novel string theory propagating in a non-commutative deformation of the four dimensional space T* T^2 whose scattering states correspond to superconformal theories in 5 dimensions and the scattering amplitudes compute…

The relation between two--dimensional integrable systems and four--dimen\-sional self--dual Yang--Mills equations is considered. Within the twistor description and the zero--curvature representation a method is given to associate self--dual…

The twistor superstring, which describes N=4 super Yang-Mills trees, is taken off-shell (for loops) by generalizing Penrose twistors (which describe on-shell momenta) to Atiyah-Drinfel'd-Hitchin-Manin twistors (which include the usual…

We study a complex analogue of a Wilson Loop, defined over a complex curve, in non-Abelian holomorphic Chern-Simons theory. We obtain a version of the Makeenko-Migdal loop equation describing how the expectation value of these Wilson Loops…

In applied mathematics generally and fluid dynamics in particular, the role of complex variable methods is normally confined to two-dimensional motion and the association of points with complex numbers via the assignment w = x+i y. In this…

We discuss recent endeavours in connecting twistor theory to higher-spin theories and the IKKT- matrix model. Starting with a brief review on higher-spin algebra hs in four-dimensional target space, we elucidate how higher-spin symmetry can…

The scattering equations provide a powerful framework for the study of scattering amplitudes in a variety of theories. Their derivation from ambitwistor string theory led to proposals for formulae at one loop on a torus for 10 dimensional…

Different string theories in twistor space have recently been proposed for describing ${\cal N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills. In this paper, my Strings 2003 talk is reviewed in which a string theory in $(x,\theta)$ space was constructed for…

We show that string theories admit chiral infinite tension analogues in which only the massless parts of the spectrum survive. Geometrically they describe holomorphic maps to spaces of complex null geodesics, known as ambitwistor spaces.…

We study scattering equations and formulas for tree amplitudes of various theories in four dimensions, in terms of spinor helicity variables and on-shell superspace for supersymmetric theories. As originally obtained in Witten's twistor…

This paper studies a class of four-dimensional quantum field theories which arise by quantizing local holomorphic field theories on twistor space. These theories have some remarkable properties: in particular, all correlation functions are…

Ambitwistor-strings are chiral strings whose targets are spaces of complex massless particles, and whose correlation functions directly lead to simple, compact formulae for scattering amplitudes and loop integrands for massless gauge and…

A new topological conformal field theory in four Euclidean dimensions is constructed from N=4 super Yang-Mills theory by twisting the whole of the conformal group with the whole of the R-symmetry group, resulting in a theory that is…

We derive a novel two-field four-dimensional integrable field theory (IFT) from 6d holomorphic Chern-Simons theory on twistor space. The four-dimensional IFT depends on a skew-symmetric linear operator acting on a Lie algebra, and when this…

We give a brief review of the twistor string approach to supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with an emphasis on the different formulations of (super)string models in supertwistor space and their superspace form. We discuss the classical…