Positive Geometries for Scattering Amplitudes in Momentum Space

Abstract

Positive geometries provide a purely geometric point of departure for studying scattering amplitudes in quantum field theory. A positive geometry is a specific semi-algebraic set equipped with a unique rational top form—the canonical form. There are known examples where the canonical form of some positive geometry, defined in some kinematic space, encodes a scattering amplitude in some theory. Remarkably, the boundaries of the positive geometry are in bijection with the physical singularities of the scattering amplitude. The Amplituhedron, discovered by Arkani-Hamed and Trnka, is a prototypical positive geometry. It lives in momentum twistor space and describes tree-level (and the integrands of planar loop-level) scattering amplitudes in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. In this dissertation, we study three positive geometries defined in on-shell momentum space: the Arkani-Hamed–Bai–He–Yan (ABHY) associahedron, the Momentum Amplituhedron, and the orthogonal Momentum Amplituhedron. Each describes tree-level scattering amplitudes for different theories in different spacetime dimensions. The three positive geometries share a series of interrelations in terms of their boundary posets and canonical forms. We review these relationships in detail, highlighting the author’s contributions. We study their boundary posets, classifying all boundaries and hence all physical singularities at the tree level. We develop new combinatorial results to derive rank-generating functions which enumerate boundaries according to their dimension. These generating functions allow us to prove that the Euler characteristics of the three positive geometries are one. In addition, we discuss methods for manipulating canonical forms using ideas from computational algebraic geometry.