Higgs plus multigluon amplitudes in QCD can be computed in an effective Lagrangian description. In the infinite top-mass limit, an amplitude with a Higgs boson and n gluons is computed by the form factor of the operator TrF^{2}. Up to two loops and for three gluons, its maximally transcendental part is captured entirely by the form factor of the protected stress tensor multiplet operator T_{2} in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. The next order correction involves the calculation of the form factor of the higher-dimensional, trilinear operator TrF^{3}. We present explicit results at two loops for three gluons, including the subleading transcendental terms derived from a particular descendant of the Konishi operator that contains TrF^{3}. These are expressed in terms of a few universal building blocks already identified in earlier calculations. We show that the maximally transcendental part of this quantity, computed in nonsupersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, is identical to the form factor of another protected operator, T_{3}, in the maximally supersymmetric theory. Our results suggest that the maximally transcendental part of Higgs amplitudes in QCD can be entirely computed through N=4 super Yang-Mills theory.

We compute two-loop form factors of operators in the SU(2|3) closed subsector of N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills. In particular, we focus on the non-protected, dimension-three operators Tr(X[Y, Z]) and Tr(ψψ) for which we compute the four possible two-loop form factors, and corresponding remainder functions, with external states XȲZ | and ψψ |. Interestingly, the maximally transcendental part of the two-loop remainder of XȲZ |Tr(X[Y, Z])|0 turns out to be identical to that of the corresponding known quantity for the half-BPS operator Tr(X 3 ). We also find a surprising connection between the terms subleading in transcendentality and certain a priori unrelated remainder densities introduced in the study of the spin chain Hamiltonian in the SU(2) sector. Next, we use our calculation to resolve the mixing, recovering anomalous dimensions and eigenstates of the dilatation operator in the SU(2|3) sector at two loops. We also speculate on potential connections between our calculations in N = 4 super Yang-Mills and Higgs + multi-gluon amplitudes in QCD in an effective Lagrangian approach.

In the large top-mass limit, Higgs plus multi-gluon amplitudes in QCD can be computed using an effective field theory. This approach turns the computation of such amplitudes into that of form factors of operators of increasing classical dimension. In this paper we focus on the first finite top-mass correction, arising from the operator Tr(F 3 ), up to two loops and three gluons. Setting up the calculation in the maximally supersymmetric theory requires identification of an appropriate supersymmetric completion of Tr(F 3 ), which we recognise as a descendant of the Konishi operator. We provide detailed computations for both this operator and the component operator Tr(F 3 ), preparing the ground for the calculation in N < 4, to be detailed in a companion paper. Our results for both operators are expressed in terms of a few universal functions of transcendental degree four and below, some of which have appeared in other contexts, hinting at universality of such quantities. An important feature of the result is a delicate cancellation of unphysical poles appearing in soft/collinear limits of the remainders which links terms of different transcendentality. Our calculation provides another example of the principle of maximal transcendentality for observables with non-trivial kinematic dependence. 5.2 Definition of the BDS form factor remainder .

The study of form factors has many phenomenologically interesting applications, one of which is Higgs plus gluon amplitudes in QCD. Through effective field theory techniques these are related to form factors of various operators of increasing classical dimension. In this paper we extend our analysis of the first finite top-mass correction, arising from the operator Tr(F 3 ), from N = 4 super Yang-Mills to theories with N < 4, for the case of three gluons and up to two loops. We confirm our earlier result that the maximally transcendental part of the associated Catani remainder is universal and equal to that of the form factor of a protected trilinear operator in the maximally supersymmetric theory. The terms with lower transcendentality deviate from the N = 4 answer by a surprisingly small set of terms involving for example ζ 2 , ζ 3 and simple powers of logarithms, for which we provide explicit expressions.

No abstract