Dissecting polytopes: Landau singularities and asymptotic expansions in $2\to 2$ scattering

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gardi, Einan, Herzog, Franz, Jones, Stephen, Ma, Yao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916400782639104
author Gardi, Einan
Herzog, Franz
Jones, Stephen
Ma, Yao
author_facet Gardi, Einan
Herzog, Franz
Jones, Stephen
Ma, Yao
contents Parametric representations of Feynman integrals have a key property: many, frequently all, of the Landau singularities appear as endpoint divergences. This leads to a geometric interpretation of the singularities as faces of Newton polytopes, which facilitates algorithmic evaluation by sector decomposition and asymptotic expansion by the method of regions. Here we identify cases where some singularities appear instead as pinches in parametric space for general kinematics, and we then extend the applicability of sector decomposition and the method of regions algorithms to such integrals, by dissecting the Newton polytope on the singular locus. We focus on $2\to 2$ massless scattering, where we show that pinches in parameter space occur starting from three loops in particular nonplanar graphs due to cancellation between terms of opposite sign in the second Symanzik polynomial. While the affected integrals cannot be evaluated by standard sector decomposition, we show how they can be computed by first linearising the graph polynomial and then splitting the integration domain at the singularity, so as to turn it into an endpoint divergence. Furthermore, we demonstrate that obtaining the correct asymptotic expansion of such integrals by the method of regions requires the introduction of new regions, which can be systematically identified as facets of the dissected polytope. In certain instances, these hidden regions exclusively govern the leading power behaviour of the integral. In momentum space, we find that in the on-shell expansion for wide-angle scattering the new regions are characterised by having two or more connected hard subgraphs, while in the Regge limit they are characterised by Glauber modes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_13738
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dissecting polytopes: Landau singularities and asymptotic expansions in $2\to 2$ scattering
Gardi, Einan
Herzog, Franz
Jones, Stephen
Ma, Yao
High Energy Physics - Theory
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Parametric representations of Feynman integrals have a key property: many, frequently all, of the Landau singularities appear as endpoint divergences. This leads to a geometric interpretation of the singularities as faces of Newton polytopes, which facilitates algorithmic evaluation by sector decomposition and asymptotic expansion by the method of regions. Here we identify cases where some singularities appear instead as pinches in parametric space for general kinematics, and we then extend the applicability of sector decomposition and the method of regions algorithms to such integrals, by dissecting the Newton polytope on the singular locus. We focus on $2\to 2$ massless scattering, where we show that pinches in parameter space occur starting from three loops in particular nonplanar graphs due to cancellation between terms of opposite sign in the second Symanzik polynomial. While the affected integrals cannot be evaluated by standard sector decomposition, we show how they can be computed by first linearising the graph polynomial and then splitting the integration domain at the singularity, so as to turn it into an endpoint divergence. Furthermore, we demonstrate that obtaining the correct asymptotic expansion of such integrals by the method of regions requires the introduction of new regions, which can be systematically identified as facets of the dissected polytope. In certain instances, these hidden regions exclusively govern the leading power behaviour of the integral. In momentum space, we find that in the on-shell expansion for wide-angle scattering the new regions are characterised by having two or more connected hard subgraphs, while in the Regge limit they are characterised by Glauber modes.
title Dissecting polytopes: Landau singularities and asymptotic expansions in $2\to 2$ scattering
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.13738