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On Tree Amplitudes in Gauge Theory and Gravity

6 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

6 Pith papers citing it
abstract

The BCFW recursion relations provide a powerful way to compute tree amplitudes in gauge theories and gravity, but only hold if some amplitudes vanish when two of the momenta are taken to infinity in a particular complex direction. This is a very surprising property, since individual Feynman diagrams all diverge at infinite momentum. In this paper we give a simple physical understanding of amplitudes in this limit, which corresponds to a hard particle with (complex) light-like momentum moving in a soft background, and can be conveniently studied using the background field method exploiting background light-cone gauge. An important role is played by enhanced spin symmetries at infinite momentum--a single copy of a "Lorentz" group for gauge theory and two copies for gravity--which together with Ward identities give a systematic expansion for amplitudes at large momentum. We use this to study tree amplitudes in a wide variety of theories, and in particular demonstrate that certain pure gauge and gravity amplitudes do vanish at infinity. Thus the BCFW recursion relations can be used to compute completely general gluon and graviton tree amplitudes in any number of dimensions. We briefly comment on the implications of these results for computing massive 4D amplitudes by KK reduction, as well understanding the unexpected cancelations that have recently been found in loop-level gravity amplitudes.

citation-role summary

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citation-polarity summary

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hep-th 6

years

2026 3 2025 3

verdicts

UNVERDICTED 6

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background 2

representative citing papers

QFT in Klein space

hep-th · 2025-05-22 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

Authors construct canonical and path-integral quantizations for QFT in Klein space using extra modes, deriving correlation functions that match Minkowski space via analytical continuation.

Tree Amplitudes with Charged Matter in Pure Gauge Theory

hep-th · 2026-04-20 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

A new Mathematica package computes tree amplitudes with arbitrary gauge bosons and arbitrarily charged massless fermions by reducing distinct-flavor partial amplitudes to linear combinations of single-flavor supersymmetric Yang-Mills components.

BCFW like recursion for Deformed Associahedron

hep-th · 2025-07-19 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0

Adapts BCFW-style recursion to deformed ABHY-associahedron and D-type cluster polytopes for tree-level and one-loop amplitudes in multi-scalar cubic theories.

citing papers explorer

Showing 6 of 6 citing papers.

  • Consistent Scattering Amplitudes, Yang-Mills, the Higgs Mechanism and the EFTs Beyond hep-th · 2026-05-05 · unverdicted · none · ref 110

    S-matrix consistency forces the complete gluon amplitude structure and requires Yang-Mills Lie algebra plus Higgs mechanism for unitarised massive vector boson scattering.

  • QFT in Klein space hep-th · 2025-05-22 · unverdicted · none · ref 44 · internal anchor

    Authors construct canonical and path-integral quantizations for QFT in Klein space using extra modes, deriving correlation functions that match Minkowski space via analytical continuation.

  • Tree Amplitudes with Charged Matter in Pure Gauge Theory hep-th · 2026-04-20 · unverdicted · none · ref 19

    A new Mathematica package computes tree amplitudes with arbitrary gauge bosons and arbitrarily charged massless fermions by reducing distinct-flavor partial amplitudes to linear combinations of single-flavor supersymmetric Yang-Mills components.

  • BCFW like recursion for Deformed Associahedron hep-th · 2025-07-19 · unverdicted · none · ref 38 · internal anchor

    Adapts BCFW-style recursion to deformed ABHY-associahedron and D-type cluster polytopes for tree-level and one-loop amplitudes in multi-scalar cubic theories.

  • Can Locality, Unitarity, and Hidden Zeros Completely Determine Tree-Level Amplitudes? hep-th · 2026-04-08 · unverdicted · none · ref 3

    Locality, unitarity, and hidden zeros determine tree-level YM and NLSM amplitudes by reconstructing their soft theorems.

  • Hidden Zeros and $2$-split via BCFW Recursion Relation hep-th · 2025-04-19 · unverdicted · none · ref 37 · internal anchor

    Hidden zeros in NLSM amplitudes are proven via modified BCFW recursion, with 2-split holding only under careful current definition.