Hidden beauty in multiloop amplitudes

Abstract

Planar L-loop maximally helicity violating amplitudes in N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory are believed to possess the remarkable property of satisfying iteration relations in L. We propose a simple new method for studying iteration relations for four-particle amplitudes which involves the use of certain linear differential operators and eliminates the need to fully evaluate any loop integrals. We carry out this procedure in explicit detail for the two-loop amplitude and prove that this method can be applied to any multiloop integral, allowing a conjectured iteration relation for any given amplitude to be tested up to polynomials in logarithms.