α'-Expansion of Open String Disk Integrals via Mellin Transformations

Open string disk integrals are represented as contour integrals of a product of Beta functions by using Mellin transformations. This makes the mathematical problem of computing the \alpha' expansion around the field theory limit basically identical to that of the \epsilon expansion in Feymann loop integrals around the four dimensional limit. More explicitly, the formula in Mellin space obtained directly from the standard Koba-Nielsen like representation is valid in a region of values of \alpha' that does not include \alpha'=0. Analytic continuation is therefore needed since contours are pinched by poles as \alpha' approaches 0. Deforming contours that get pinched by poles generates a set of (n-3)! multidimensional residues left behind which contain all the field theory information. We end by drawing some analogies between the field theory formulas obtained by this method and those derived recently from using the scattering equations.