World-sheet Form Research Articles

On positive geometries of quartic interactions: Stokes polytopes, lower forms on associahedra and world-sheet forms

In [1], two of the present authors along with P. Raman attempted to extend the Amplituhedron program for scalar field theories [2] to quartic scalar interactions. In this paper we develop various aspects of this proposal. Using recent seminal results in Representation theory [3, 4], we show that projectivity of scattering forms and existence of kinematic space associahedron completely capture planar amplitudes of quartic interaction. We generalise the results of [1] and show that for any n-particle amplitude, the positive geometry associated to the projective scattering form is a convex realisation of Stokes polytope which can be naturally embedded inside one of the ABHY associahedra defined in [2, 5]. For a special class of Stokes polytopes with hyper-cubic topology, we show that they have a canonical convex realisation in kinematic space as boundaries of kinematic space associahedra.We then use these kinematic space geometric constructions to write world-sheet forms for \U0001d7194 theory which are forms of lower rank on the CHY moduli space. We argue that just as in the case of bi-adjoint \U0001d7193 scalar amplitudes, scattering equations can be used as diffeomorphisms between certain frac{n-4}{2} forms on the world-sheet and frac{n-4}{2} forms on ABHY associahedron that generate quartic amplitudes.

Scattering forms, worldsheet forms and amplitudes from subspaces

We present a general construction of two types of differential forms, based on any (n−3)-dimensional subspace in the kinematic space of n massless particles. The first type is the so-called projective, scattering forms in kinematic space, while the second is defined in the moduli space of n-punctured Riemann spheres which we call worldsheet forms. We show that the pushforward of worldsheet forms, by summing over solutions of scattering equations, gives the corresponding scattering forms, which generalizes the results of [1]. The pullback of scattering forms to subspaces can have natural interpretations as amplitudes in terms of Bern-Carrasco-Johansson double-copy construction or Cachazo-He-Yuan formula. As an application of our formalism, we construct in this way a large class of d log scattering forms and worldsheet forms, which are in one-to-one correspondence with non-planar MHV leading singularities in mathcal{N}=4 super-Yang-Mills. For every leading singularity function, we present a new determinant formula in moduli space, as well as a (combinatoric) polytope and associated scattering form in kinematic space. These include the so-called Cayley cases, where in each case the scattering form is the canonical forms of a convex polytope in the subspace, and scattering equations admit elegant rewritings as a map from the moduli space to the subspace.

2D sigma models and differential Poisson algebras

We construct a two-dimensional topological sigma model whose target space is endowed with a Poisson algebra for differential forms. The model consists of an equal number of bosonic and fermionic fields of worldsheet form degrees zero and one. The action is built using exterior products and derivatives, without any reference to any worldsheet metric, and is of the covariant Hamiltonian form. The equations of motion define a universally Cartan integrable system. In addition to gauge symmetries, the model has one rigid nilpotent supersymmetry corresponding to the target space de Rham operator. The rigid and local symmetries of the action, respectively, are equivalent to the Poisson bracket being compatible with the de Rham operator and obeying graded Jacobi identities. We propose that perturbative quantization of the model yields a covariantized differential star product algebra of Kontsevich type. We comment on the resemblance to the topological A model.

Comments on world-sheet form factors in AdS/CFT

We study form factors in the light-cone gauge world-sheet theory for strings in AdS5 ×S5. We perturbatively calculate the two-particle form factor in a closed sector to one-loop in the near-plane-wave limit and to two-loops in the Maldacena–Swanson limit. We also perturbatively solve the functional equation which follows from the form factor axioms for the world-sheet theory and show that the ‘minimal’ solution correctly reproduces the discontinuities of the perturbative calculations. Finally we propose a prescription, valid for polynomial orders of the inverse world-sheet length, for extracting the finite-volume world-sheet matrix element from the form factors and show that the two-excitation matrix element matches with the thermodynamic limit of the spin–chain description of certain tree-level SYM structure constants.

Worldsheet form factors in AdS/CFT

We formulate a set of consistency conditions appropriate to worldsheet form factors in the massive, integrable but nonrelativistic, light-cone gauge fixed ${\mathrm{AdS}}_{5}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathrm{S}}^{5}$ string theory. We then perturbatively verify that these conditions hold, at tree level in the near-plane-wave limit and to one loop in the near-flat (Maldacena-Swanson) limit, for a number of specific cases. We further study the form factors in the weakly coupled dual description, verifying that the relevant conditions naturally hold for the one-loop Heisenberg spin chain. Finally, we note that the near-plane-wave expressions for the form factors, when further expanded in small momentum or, equivalently, large charge density, reproduce the thermodynamic limit of the spin-chain results at leading order.

Antisymmetric string actions

Abstract An action is presented for the free bosonic string on external flat space in terms of an antisymmetric second-rank string background tensor which is classically equivalent to the Nambu-Goto action. Both action and field equations are entirely described in terms of 2D world-sheet forms, without any reference to a 2D metric tensor background. The analysis of its canonical formulation shows how the quadratic Virasoro constraints are generated in this case and what their connection with the Bianchi identities are. Since in the orthonormal gauge the reduced action coincides with the standard one, it has the same critical dimension D = 26. The existence of an interaction term of a purely geometric structure stemming in the extrinsic curvature is pointed out. Its action and the new string field equations are then derived. This polynomial antisymmetric string action is uniformly generalized in order to describe d D -dimensional extended objects in D -dimensional flat space.