Recursion relations for one-loop Goldstone boson amplitudes

Abstract

In this paper, we construct the recursion relations for one-loop planar integrands in the $SU(N)$ nonlinear sigma model. This generalizes the soft recursions for tree-level amplitudes in a variety of quantum field theories with special soft limits. The main ingredient is the definition of the one-loop planar integrand, which is fixed by cuts in the sense of generalized unitarity and by requiring the Adler zero on all external legs. We show that this does not uniquely fix the integrand, so additional constraints on the soft behavior of the loop momentum have to be imposed. Our work is the first step in extending modern amplitudes methods for loop amplitudes to effective field theories with special soft limits.