Analytic representations of Yang-Mills amplitudes

Scattering amplitudes in Yang-Mills theory can be represented in the formalism of Cachazo, He and Yuan (CHY) as integrals over an auxiliary projective space-fully localized on the support of the scattering equations. Because solving the scattering equations is difficult and summing over the solutions algebraically complex, a method of directly integrating the terms that appear in this representation has long been sought. We solve this important open problem by first rewriting the terms in a manifestly Mobius-invariant form and then using monodromy relations (inspired by analogy to string theory) to decompose terms into those for which combinatorial rules of integration are known. The result is the foundations of a systematic procedure to obtain analytic, covariant forms of Yang-Mills tree-amplitudes for any number of external legs and in any number of dimensions. As examples, we provide compact analytic expressions for amplitudes involving up to six gluons of arbitrary helicities. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B. V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.