Four-loop Cusp Anomalous Dimension Research Articles

Higher-loop integrated negative geometries in ABJM

In the three-dimensional \\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\mathcal{N}$$\\end{document} = 6 Chern-Simons matter (ABJM) theory, the integrand for the logarithm of the scattering amplitude admits a decomposition in terms of negative geometries, which implies that all the infrared divergences concentrate in the last loop integration. We compute the infrared-finite functions that arise from performing a three-loop integration over the four-loop integrand for the logarithm of the four-point amplitude, for which we use the method of differential equations. Our results provide a direct computation of the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension of the theory, in agreement with the current all-loop integrability-based proposal. We find an apparent simplicity in the leading singularities of the integrated results, provided one works in the frame in which the unintegrated loop variable goes to infinity. Finally, our results suggest an alternating sign pattern for the integrated negative geometries in the Euclidean region.

Symmetry properties of Wilson loops with a Lagrangian insertion

Null Wilson loops in mathcal{N} = 4 super Yang-Mills are dual to planar scattering amplitudes. This duality implies hidden symmetries for both objects. We consider closely related infrared finite observables, defined as the Wilson loop with a Lagrangian insertion, normalized by the Wilson loop itself. Unlike ratio and remainder functions studied in the literature, this observable is non-trivial already for four scattered particles and bears close resemblance to (finite parts of) scattering processes in non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Moreover, by integrating over the insertion point, one can recover information on the amplitude, as was recently done to compute the full four-loop cusp anomalous dimension. We study the general structure of the Wilson loop with a Lagrangian insertion, focusing in particular on its leading singularities and their (hidden) symmetry properties. Thanks to the close connection of the observable to integrands of MHV amplitudes, it is natural to expect that its leading singularities can be written as certain Grassmannian integrals. The latter are manifestly dual conformal. They also have a conformal symmetry, up to total derivatives. We find that, surprisingly, the conformal symmetry becomes an invariance in the frame where the Lagrangian insertion point is sent to infinity. Furthermore, we use integrability methods to study how higher Yangian charges act on the Grassmannian integral. We evaluate the n-particle observable both at tree- and at one-loop level, finding compact analytic formulas. These results are explicitly written in the form of conformal leading singularities, multiplied by transcendental functions. We then compare these formulas to known expressions for all-plus amplitudes in pure Yang-Mills theory. We find a remarkable new connection: the Wilson loop with Lagrangian insertion in mathcal{N} = 4 super Yang-Mills appears to predict the maximal weight terms of the planar pure Yang-Mills all-plus amplitude. We test this relationship for the two-loop n-point Yang-Mills amplitude, as well as for the three-loop four-point amplitude.

The four-loop cusp anomalous dimension from the [formula omitted] Sudakov form factor

We present an analytic derivation of the full four-loop cusp anomalous dimension of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory from the Sudakov form factor. To extract the cusp anomalous dimension, we calculate the ϵ−2 pole of the form factor using parametric integrations of finite integrals. We provide uniformly transcendental results for the master integrals through to weight six and confirm a very recent independent analytic result for the full four-loop cusp anomalous dimension of the N=4 model.

The full four-loop cusp anomalous dimension in mathcal{N} = 4 super Yang-Mills and QCD

We present the complete formula for the cusp anomalous dimension at four loops in QCD and in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills. In the latter theory it is given by {left.{Gamma}_{mathrm{cusp},mathrm{A}}right|}_{alpha_s^4}=-{left(frac{alpha_sN}{pi}right)}^4left[frac{73{pi}^6}{20160}+frac{zeta_3^2}{8}+frac{1}{N^2}left(frac{31{pi}^6}{5040}+frac{9{zeta}_3^2}{4}right)right]. Our approach is based on computing the correlation function of a rectangular light-like Wilson loop with a Lagrangian insertion, normalized by the expectation value of the Wilson loop. In maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, this ratio is a finite function of a cross-ratio and the coupling constant. We compute it to three loops, including the full colour dependence. Integrating over the position of the Lagrangian insertion gives the four-loop Wilson loop. We extract its leading divergence, which determines the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension. Finally, we employ a supersymmetric decomposition to derive the last missing ingredient in the corresponding QCD result.

Matter Dependence of the Four-Loop Cusp Anomalous Dimension.

We compute analytically the matter-dependent contributions to the quartic Casimir term of the four-loop lightlike cusp anomalous dimension in QCD, with n_{f} fermion and n_{s} scalar flavors. The result is extracted from the double pole of a scalar form factor. We adopt a new strategy for the choice of master integrals with simple analytic and infrared properties, which significantly simplifies our calculation. To this end, we first identify a set of integrals for which the integrands have a d log form, and are hence expected to have uniform transcendental weight. We then perform a systematic analysis of the soft and collinear regions of loop integration and build linear combinations of integrals with a simpler infrared pole structure. In this way, only integrals with ten or fewer propagators are needed for obtaining the cusp anomalous dimension. These integrals are then computed via the method of differential equations through the addition of an auxiliary scale. Combining our result with that of a parallel paper, we obtain the complete n_{f} dependence of the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension in QCD. Finally, using known numerical results for the gluonic contributions, we obtain an improved numerical prediction for the cusp anomalous dimension in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory.

Matter dependence of the four-loop QCD cusp anomalous dimension: from small angles to all angles

We compute the fermionic contributions to the cusp anomalous dimension in QCD at four loops as an expansion for small cusp angle. As a byproduct we also obtain the respective terms of the four-loop HQET wave function anomalous dimension. Our new results at small angles provide stringent tests of a recent conjecture for the exact angle dependence of the matter terms in the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension. We find that the conjecture does not hold for two of the seven fermionic color structures, but passes all tests for the remaining terms. This provides strong support for the validity of the corresponding conjectured expressions with full angle dependence. Taking the limit of large Minkowskian angle, we extract novel analytic results for certain terms of the light-like cusp anomalous dimension. They agree with the known numerical results. Finally, we study the anti-parallel lines limit of the cusp anomalous dimension. In a conformal theory, the latter is proportional to the static quark-antiquark potential. We use the new four-loop results to determine parts of the conformal anomaly term.

Addendum to: Four-loop cusp anomalous dimension in QED

Addendum to: Four-loop cusp anomalous dimension in QED

Four-loop non-singlet splitting functions in the planar limit and beyond

We present the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N3LO) contributions to the non-singlet splitting functions for both parton distribution and fragmentation functions in perturbative QCD. The exact expressions are derived for the terms contributing in the limit of a large number of colours. For the remaining contributions, approximations are provided that are sufficient for all collider-physics applications. From their threshold limits we derive analytical and high-accuracy numerical results, respectively, for all contributions to the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension for quarks, including the terms proportional to quartic Casimir operators. We briefly illustrate the numerical size of the four-loop corrections, and the remarkable renormalization-scale stability of the N3LO results, for the evolution of the non-singlet parton distribution and the fragmentation functions. Our results appear to provide a first point of contact of four-loop QCD calculations and the so-called wrapping corrections to anomalous dimensions in mathcal{N}=4 super Yang-Mills theory.

Large-nf contributions to the four-loop splitting functions in QCD

We have computed the fourth-order nf2 contributions to all three non-singlet quark–quark splitting functions and their four nf3 flavour-singlet counterparts for the evolution of the parton distributions of hadrons in perturbative QCD with nf effectively massless quark flavours. The analytic form of these functions is presented in both Mellin N-space and momentum-fraction x-space; the large-x and small-x limits are discussed. Our results agree with all available predictions derived from lower-order information. The large-x limit of the quark–quark cases provides the complete nf2 part of the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension which agrees with two recent partial computations.

Factorization and N3LLp+NNLO predictions for the Higgs cross section with a jet veto

We have recently derived a factorization formula for the Higgs-boson production cross section in the presence of a jet veto, which allows for a systematic resummation of large Sudakov logarithms of the form $ \alpha_s^n{\ln^m}\left( {{{{p_T^{\mathrm{veto}}}} \left/ {{{m_{\mathrm{H}}}}} \right.}} \right) $ , along with the large virtual corrections known to affect also the total cross section. Here we determine the ingredients entering this formula at two-loop accuracy. Specifically, we compute the dependence on the jet-radius parameter R, which is encoded in the two-loop coefficient of the collinear anomaly, by means of a direct, fully analytic calculation in the framework of soft-collinear effective theory. We confirm the result obtained by Banfi et al. from a related calculation in QCD, and demonstrate that factorization-breaking, soft-collinear mixing effects do not arise at leading power in $ {{{p_T^{\mathrm{veto}}}} \left/ {{{m_{\mathrm{H}}}}} \right.} $ , even for $ R=\mathcal{O}(1) $ . In addition, we extract the two-loop collinear beam functions numerically. We present detailed numerical predictions for the jet-veto cross section with partial next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, matched to the next-to-next-to-leading order cross section in fixed-order perturbation theory. The only missing ingredients at this level of accuracy are the three-loop anomaly coefficient and the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension, whose numerical effects we estimate to be small.

Four-loop cusp anomalous dimension from obstructions

We introduce a method for extracting the cusp anomalous dimension at $L$ loops from four-gluon amplitudes in $\mathcal{N}=4$ Yang-Mills without evaluating any integrals that depend on the kinematical invariants. We show that the anomalous dimension only receives contributions from the obstructions introduced in [F. Cachazo, M. Spradlin, and A. Volovich, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2006) 007]. We illustrate this method by extracting the two- and three-loop anomalous dimensions analytically and the four-loop one numerically. The four-loop result was recently guessed to be ${f}^{(4)}=\ensuremath{-}(4{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2}^{3}+24{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2}{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{4}+50{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{6}\ensuremath{-}4(1+r){\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{3}^{2})$ with $r=\ensuremath{-}2$ using integrability and string theory arguments in [N. Beisert, B. Eden, and M. Staudacher, J. Stat. Mech. (2007) P021]. Simultaneously, ${f}^{(4)}$ was computed numerically in [Z. Bern, M. Czakon, L. J. Dixon, D. A. Kosower, and V. A. Smirnov, Phys. Rev. D 75, 085010 (2007)] from the four-loop amplitude obtaining, with best precision at the symmetric point $s=t$, $r=\ensuremath{-}2.028(36)$. Our computation is manifestly $s/t$ independent and improves the precision to $r=\ensuremath{-}2.000\text{ }02(3)$, providing strong evidence in favor of the conjecture. The improvement is possible due to a large reduction in the number of contributing terms, as well as a reduction in the number of integration variables in each term.