20.11.2024 (Wednesday)

Lonti: Scattering Amplitudes and Feynman Integrals: A Modern Introduction

Regular Seminar Georgios Papathanasiou (City, University of London)

at:
10:30 Other
room LIMS
abstract:

Scattering amplitudes provide crucial theoretical input in collider and gravitational wave physics, and at the same time exhibit a remarkable mathematical structure. These lectures will introduce essential concepts and modern techniques exploiting this structure so as to efficiently compute amplitudes and their building blocks, Feynman integrals, in perturbation theory. We will start by decomposing gauge theory amplitudes into simpler pieces based on colour and helicity information. Focusing on tree level, we will then show how these may be determined from their analytic properties with the help of Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten recursion. Moving on to loop level, we will define the the class of polylogarithmic functions amplitudes and integrals often evaluate to, and explain their properties as well as relate them to the universal framework for predicting their singularities, known as the Landau equations. Time permitting, we will also summarise the state of the art in the calculation of the aforementioned singularities, and their intriguing relation to mathematical objects known as cluster algebras.