Expansion of Einstein-Yang-Mills amplitude

Abstract

In this paper, we study from various perspectives the expansion of tree level single trace Einstein-Yang-Mills amplitudes into linear combination of color-ordered Yang-Mills amplitudes. By applying the gauge invariance principle, a programable recursive construction is devised to expand EYM amplitude with arbitrary number of gravitons into EYM amplitudes with fewer gravitons. Based on this recursive technique we write down the complete expansion of any single trace EYM amplitude in the basis of color-order Yang-Mills amplitude. As a byproduct, an algorithm for constructing a polynomial form of the BCJ numerator for Yang-Mills amplitudes is also outlined in this paper. In addition, by applying BCFW recursion relation we show how to arrive at the same EYM amplitude expansion from the on-shell perspective. And we examine the EYM expansion using KLT relations and show how to evaluate the expansion coefficients efficiently.