Eliminating spurious poles from gauge-theoretic amplitudes

Abstract

This note addresses the problem of spurious poles in gauge-theoretic scattering amplitudes. New twistor coordinates for the momenta are introduced, based on the concept of dual conformal invariance. The cancellation of spurious poles for a class of NMHV amplitudes is greatly simplified in these coordinates. The poles are eliminated altogether by defining a new type of twistor integral, dual to twistor diagrams as previously studied, and considerably simpler. The geometric features indicate a supersymmetric extension of the formalism at least to all NMHV amplitudes, allowing the dihedral symmetry of the super-amplitude to be made manifest. More generally, the definition of ‘momentum-twistor’ coordinates suggests a powerful new approach to the study of scattering amplitudes.