Principal Landau determinants

Abstract

We reformulate the Landau analysis of Feynman integrals with the aim of advancing the state of the art in modern particle-physics computations. We contribute new algorithms for computing Landau singularities, using tools from polyhedral geometry and symbolic/numerical elimination. Inspired by the work of Gelfand, Kapranov, and Zelevinsky (GKZ) on generalized Euler integrals, we define the principal Landau determinant of a Feynman diagram. We illustrate with a number of examples that this algebraic formalism allows to compute many components of the Landau singular locus. We adapt the GKZ framework by carefully specializing Euler integrals to Feynman integrals. For instance, ultraviolet and infrared singularities are detected as irreducible components of an incidence variety, which project dominantly to the kinematic space. We compute principal Landau determinants for the infinite families of one-loop and banana diagrams with different mass configurations, and for a range of cutting-edge Standard Model processes. Our algorithms build on the Julia package Landau.jl and are implemented in the new open-source package PLD.jl available at https://mathrepo.mis.mpg.de/PLD/. Program summaryProgram title:PLD.jlCPC Library link to program files:https://doi.org/10.17632/7h5644mm4n.1Developer's repository link:https://mathrepo.mis.mpg.de/PLD/Licensing provisions: Creative Commons by 4.0Programming language:JuliaSupplementary material: The repository includes the source code with documentation (PLD_code.zip), a jupyter notebook tutorial providing installation and usage instructions (PLD_notebook.zip), a database containing the output of our algorithm on 114 examples of Feynman integrals (PLD_database.zip).Nature of problem: A fundamental challenge in scattering amplitude is to determine the values of complexified kinematic invariants for which an amplitude can develop singularities. Bjorken, Landau, and Nakanishi wrote a system of polynomial constraints, nowadays known as the Landau equations. This project aims to rigorously revisit the Landau analysis of the singularity locus of Feynman integrals with a practical view towards explicit computations.Solution method: We define the principal Landau determinant (PLD), which is a variety inspired by the work of Gelfand, Kapranov, and Zelevinsky (GKZ). We conjecture that it provides a subset of the singularity locus, and we implement effective algorithms to compute its defining equation explicitly.