The Wilson loop/amplitude duality and dual superconformal symmetry

by Paul Heslop (Queen Mary, University of London)

Tuesday 14 Oct 2008, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Theory Conference Room (CERN)

In the last year or so, it has become increasingly clear that there is a duality relation between maximally helicity violating (MHV) gluon scattering amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills and Wilson loops over a light-like polygon whose edges correspond to the momenta of the scattered particles. I will review this development from the perturbative Yang-Mills side and go on to discuss conformal symmetry of the Wilson loop and its consequences (dual conformal symmetry) for the amplitude. We will then look at the full amplitude (ie including non MHV amplitudes) and consider dual superconformal symmetry acting on this: by generalising the BCFW recursion relation to Nair superspace, we prove that superconformal symmetry is present at tree level. Finally if there is time, we will consider some preliminary analogous results for N=8 supergravity.