Scattering of massless particles in arbitrary dimensions.

We present a compact formula for the complete tree-level S-matrix of pure Yang-Mills and gravity theories in arbitrary spacetime dimensions. The new formula for the scattering of n particles is given by an integral over the positions of n points on a sphere restricted to satisfy a dimension-independent set of equations. The integrand is constructed using the reduced Pfaffian of a 2n×2n matrix, Ψ, that depends on momenta and polarization vectors. In its simplest form, the gravity integrand is a reduced determinant which is the square of the Pfaffian in the Yang-Mills integrand. Gauge invariance is completely manifest as it follows from a simple property of the Pfaffian.

Singularity structure of maximally supersymmetric scattering amplitudes.

We present evidence that loop amplitudes in maximally supersymmetric (N=4) Yang-Mills theory (SYM) beyond the planar limit share some of the remarkable structures of the planar theory. In particular, we show that through two loops, the four-particle amplitude in full N=4 SYM has only logarithmic singularities and is free of any poles at infinity--properties closely related to uniform transcendentality and the UV finiteness of the theory. We also briefly comment on implications for maximal (N=8) supergravity theory (SUGRA).

Gravity from rational curves in twistor space.

This Letter presents a new formula which is conjectured to yield all tree amplitudes in N=8 supergravity. The amplitudes are described in terms of higher degree rational maps to twistor space. The resulting expression has manifest N=8 supersymmetry and is manifestly permutation symmetric in all external states. It depends monomially on the infinity twistor that explicitly breaks conformal symmetry to Poincaré symmetry. We have carried out various nontrivial analytic and numerical checks of the formula for up to eight external states with arbitrary helicities.

Direct proof of the tree-level scattering amplitude recursion relation in Yang-mills theory.

Recently, by using the known structure of one-loop scattering amplitudes for gluons in Yang-Mills theory, a recursion relation for tree-level scattering amplitudes has been deduced. Here, we give a short and direct proof of this recursion relation based on properties of tree-level amplitudes only.