Using Covariant Polarisation Sums in QCD

Covariant gauges lead to spurious, non-physical polarisation states of gauge bosons. In QED, the use of the Feynman gauge, $$\sum _{\lambda } \varepsilon _\mu ^{(\lambda )}\varepsilon _\nu ^{(\lambda )*} = -\eta _{\mu \nu }$$ ∑ λ ε μ ( λ ) ε ν ( λ ) ∗ = - η μ ν , is justified by the Ward identity which ensures that the contributions of non-physical polarisation states cancel in physical observables. In contrast, the same replacement can be applied only to a single external gauge boson in squared amplitudes of non-abelian gauge theories like QCD. In general, the use of this replacement requires to include external Faddeev–Popov ghosts. We present a pedagogical derivation of these ghost contributions applying the optical theorem and the Cutkosky cutting rules. We find that the resulting cross terms $$\mathcal {A}(c_1,\bar{c}_1;\ldots )\mathcal {A}(\bar{c}_1,c_1;\ldots )^*$$ A ( c 1 , c ¯ 1 ; … ) A ( c ¯ 1 , c 1 ; … ) ∗ between ghost amplitudes cannot be transformed into $$(-1)^{n/2}|\mathcal {A}(c_1,\bar{c}_1;\ldots )|^2$$ ( - 1 ) n / 2 | A ( c 1 , c ¯ 1 ; … ) | 2 in the case of more than two ghosts. Thus the Feynman rule stated in the literature holds only for two external ghosts, while it is in general incorrect.

An analytical approximation to measure the extinction cross-section using: Localized Waves

We present a general expression for the optical theorem in terms of Localized Waves. This representation is well-known and commonly used to generate Frozen waves, Xwaves, and other propagation invariant beams. We analyze several examples using different input beam sources on a circular detector to measure the extinction cross-section.

Generalization of the Optical Theorem to an Arbitrary Multipole Excitation of a Particle near a Transparent Substrate

In the present paper, the generalization of the optical theorem to the case of a penetrable particle deposited near a transparent substrate that is excited by a multipole of an arbitrary order and polarization has been derived. In the derivation we employ classic Maxwell’s theory, Gauss’s theorem, and use a special representation for the multipole excitation. It has been shown that the extinction cross-section can be evaluated by the calculation of some specific derivatives from the scattered field at the position of the multipole location, in addition to some finite integrals which account for the multipole polarization and the presence of the substrate. Finally, the present paper considers some specific examples for the excitation of a particle by an electric quadrupole.

Triple crossing positivity bounds for multi-field theories

We develop a formalism to extract triple crossing symmetric positivity bounds for effective field theories with multiple degrees of freedom, by making use of su symmetric dispersion relations supplemented with positivity of the partial waves, st null constraints and the generalized optical theorem. This generalizes the convex cone approach to constrain the s2 coefficient space to higher orders. Optimal positive bounds can be extracted by semi-definite programs with a continuous decision variable, compared with linear programs for the case of a single field. As an example, we explicitly compute the positivity constraints on bi-scalar theories, and find all the Wilson coefficients can be constrained in a finite region, including the coefficients with odd powers of s, which are absent in the single scalar case.

Diagrammar of physical and fake particles and spectral optical theorem

We prove spectral optical identities in quantum field theories of physical particles (defined by the Feynman iϵ prescription) and purely virtual particles (defined by the fakeon prescription). The identities are derived by means of purely algebraic operations and hold for every (multi)threshold separately and for arbitrary frequencies. Their major significance is that they offer a deeper understanding on the problem of unitarity in quantum field theory. In particular, they apply to “skeleton” diagrams, before integrating on the space components of the loop momenta and the phase spaces. In turn, the skeleton diagrams obey a spectral optical theorem, which gives the usual optical theorem for amplitudes, once the integrals on the space components of the loop momenta and the phase spaces are restored. The fakeon prescription/projection is implemented by dropping the thresholds that involve fakeon frequencies. We give examples at one loop (bubble, triangle, box, pentagon and hexagon), two loops (triangle with “diagonal”, box with diagonal) and arbitrarily many loops. We also derive formulas for the loop integrals with fakeons and relate them to the known formulas for the loop integrals with physical particles.

Scattering in Classical and Quantum Physics

Scattering experiments provide the main source of information on the properties of elementary particles. Here we present the theory of scattering in both classical and non-relativistic quantum physics. We introduce the basic notions of cross section and of range and strength of interactions. We work out some illustrative examples. The concept of resonant scattering, central to almost all applications in particle physics, is explained in the simple case of potential scattering, where we derive the Breit–Wigner formula. This framework of non-relativistic potential scattering turns out to be very convenient for introducing several other important concepts and results, such as the optical theorem, the partial wave amplitudes and the corresponding phase shifts and scattering lengths. The special cases of scattering at low energies, and that in the Born approximation, are studied. We also offer a first glance at the problem of the infrared divergences for the case of Coulomb scattering.

From locality and unitarity to cosmological correlators

In the standard approach to deriving inflationary predictions, we evolve a vacuum state in time according to the rules of a given model. Since the only observables are the future values of correlators and not their time evolution, this brings about a large degeneracy: a vast number of different models are mapped to the same minute number of observables. Furthermore, due to the lack of time-translation invariance, even tree-level calculations require an increasing number of nested integrals that quickly become intractable. Here we ask how much of the final observables can be “bootstrapped” directly from locality, unitarity and symmetries.To this end, we introduce two new “boostless” bootstrap tools to efficiently compute tree-level cosmological correlators/wavefunctions without any assumption about de Sitter boosts. The first is a Manifestly Local Test (MLT) that any n-point (wave)function of massless scalars or gravitons must satisfy if it is to arise from a manifestly local theory. When combined with a sub-set of the recently proposed Bootstrap Rules, this allows us to compute explicitly all bispectra to all orders in derivatives for a single scalar. Since we don’t invoke soft theorems, this can also be extended to multi-field inflation. The second is a partial energy recursion relation that allows us to compute exchange correlators. Combining a bespoke complex shift of the partial energies with Cauchy’s integral theorem and the Cosmological Optical Theorem, we fix exchange correlators up to a boundary term. The latter can be determined up to contact interactions using unitarity and manifest locality. As an illustration, we use these tools to bootstrap scalar inflationary trispectra due to graviton exchange and inflaton self-interactions.

Generalized Optical Theorem and Point Sources

A simple derivation of the general form of the optical theorem (GOT) is given for the case of a conservative scatterer in a homogeneous lossless medium, suitable for describing point sources and an observation region close to the scatterer. The presentation is based on the use of the operator approach and scalar wave equation in the limit of vanishingly small absorption. This approach does not require asymptotic estimates of rapidly oscillating integrals, does not use the integration of fluxes, which leads to the loss of information about the energy conservation law, and allows a natural generalization to the case of polarized radiation, as well as more complex multi-part fields. Such GOT generalizes the results known in the mathematical literature for models to the case of any conservative (real) scattering potential and arbitrary sources.