Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Four-point correlator of planar supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at twelve loops

Jacob L. Bourjaily1,*, Song He (何颂)2,3,†, Canxin Shi (施灿欣)2,‡, and Yichao Tang (唐一朝)2,4,§

  • *Contact author: bourjaily@psu.edu
  • †Contact author: songhe@itp.ac.cn
  • ‡Contact author: shicanxin@itp.ac.cn
  • §Contact author: tangyichao@itp.ac.cn

Phys. Rev. D 112, 126029 – Published 31 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/kl4q-mpwp

Abstract

We determine the four-point correlation function and amplitude in planar, maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory to 12 loops. We find that the recently introduced “double-triangle” rule in fact implies the previously described square and pentagon rules; and when applied to 12 loops, it fully determines the 11-loop correlator and fixes all but 3 of the (619,981,403) 12-loop coefficients; these remaining coefficients can be subsequently fixed using the “(single-)triangle” rule. Not only do we confirm the Catalan conjecture for antiprism graphs, but we discover evidence for a greatly generalized Catalan conjecture for the coefficients of all polygon-framed fishnet graphs. We provide all contributions through 12 loops as Supplemental Material to this work.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (80)

  1. Z. Bern, J. Rozowsky, and B. Yan, Two-loop four-gluon amplitudes in N=4 Super Yang-Mills, Phys. Lett. B 401, 273 (1997).
  2. C. Anastasiou, Z. Bern, L. J. Dixon, and D. A. Kosower, Planar amplitudes in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 251602 (2003).
  3. Z. Bern, L. J. Dixon, and V. A. Smirnov, Iteration of planar amplitudes in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at three loops and beyond, Phys. Rev. D 72, 085001 (2005).
  4. Z. Bern, M. Czakon, L. J. Dixon, D. A. Kosower, and V. A. Smirnov, The four-loop planar amplitude and cusp anomalous dimension in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. D 75, 085010 (2007).
  5. Z. Bern, J. Carrasco, H. Johansson, and D. Kosower, Maximally supersymmetric planar Yang-Mills amplitudes at five loops, Phys. Rev. D 76, 125020 (2007).
  6. Z. Bern, J. J. Carrasco, L. J. Dixon, M. R. Douglas, M. von Hippel, and H. Johansson, D=5 maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory diverges at six loops, Phys. Rev. D 87, 025018 (2013).
  7. J. L. Bourjaily, A. DiRe, A. Shaikh, M. Spradlin, and A. Volovich, The soft-collinear bootstrap: N=4 Yang-Mills amplitudes at six and seven loops, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2012) 032.
  8. J. L. Bourjaily, P. Heslop, and V.-V. Tran, Perturbation theory at eight loops: Novel structures and the breakdown of manifest conformality in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 191602 (2016).
  9. J. L. Bourjaily, P. Heslop, and V.-V. Tran, Amplitudes and correlators to ten loops using simple, graphical bootstraps, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2016) 125.
  10. S. He, C. Shi, Y. Tang, and Y.-Q. Zhang, The cusp limit of correlators and a new graphical bootstrap for correlators/amplitudes to eleven loops, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2025) 192.
  11. N. Gromov, V. Kazakov, and P. Vieira, Exact spectrum of anomalous dimensions of planar N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 131601 (2009).
  12. N. Beisert, C. Ahn, L. F. Alday, Z. Bajnok, J. M. Drummond et al., Review of AdS/CFT integrability: An overview, Lett. Math. Phys. 99, 3 (2012).
  13. M. L. Mangano and S. J. Parke, Multiparton amplitudes in gauge theories, Phys. Rep. 200, 301 (1991).
  14. Z. Bern, L. J. Dixon, D. C. Dunbar, and D. A. Kosower, One-loop n-point gauge theory amplitudes, unitarity and collinear limits, Nucl. Phys. B425, 217 (1994).
  15. Z. Bern, L. J. Dixon, D. C. Dunbar, and D. A. Kosower, Fusing gauge theory tree amplitudes into loop amplitudes, Nucl. Phys. B435, 59 (1995).
  16. L. J. Dixon, Calculating scattering amplitudes efficiently, arXiv:hep-ph/9601359.
  17. F. Cachazo and P. Svrcek, Lectures on twistor strings and perturbative Yang-Mills theory, Proc. Sci. RTN2005 (2005) 004 [arXiv:hep-th/0504194].
  18. Z. Bern, L. J. Dixon, and D. A. Kosower, On-shell methods in perturbative QCD, Ann. Phys. (Amsterdam) 322, 1587 (2007).
  19. B. Feng and M. Luo, An introduction to on-shell recursion relations, Front. Phys. 7, 533 (2011).
  20. R. Britto, F. Cachazo, and B. Feng, New recursion relations for tree amplitudes of gluons, Nucl. Phys. B715, 499 (2005).
  21. R. Britto, F. Cachazo, B. Feng, and E. Witten, Direct proof of tree-level recursion relation in Yang- Mills theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 181602 (2005).
  22. N. Arkani-Hamed, J. L. Bourjaily, F. Cachazo, S. Caron-Huot, and J. Trnka, The all-loop integrand for scattering amplitudes in planar N=4 sYM, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2011) 041.
  23. J. M. Drummond, J. Henn, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, On planar gluon amplitudes/Wilson loops duality, Nucl. Phys. B795, 52 (2008).
  24. L. F. Alday and J. M. Maldacena, Gluon scattering amplitudes at strong coupling, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2007) 064.
  25. J. Drummond, J. Henn, G. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, Dual superconformal symmetry of scattering amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, Nucl. Phys. B828, 317 (2010).
  26. A. Brandhuber, P. Heslop, and G. Travaglini, A note on dual superconformal symmetry of the N=4 super Yang-Mills S-matrix, Phys. Rev. D 78, 125005 (2008).
  27. J. M. Drummond, J. M. Henn, and J. Plefka, Yangian symmetry of scattering amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2009) 046.
  28. J. Drummond, Review of AdS/CFT integrability, Chapter V.2: Dual superconformal symmetry, Lett. Math. Phys. 99, 481 (2012).
  29. A. Brandhuber, P. Heslop, and G. Travaglini, MHV amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills and Wilson loops, Nucl. Phys. B794, 231 (2008).
  30. S. Caron-Huot, Notes on the scattering amplitude/Wilson loop duality, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2011) 058.
  31. L. F. Alday, B. Eden, G. P. Korchemsky, J. Maldacena, and E. Sokatchev, From correlation functions to Wilson loops, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2011) 123.
  32. B. Eden, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, From correlation functions to scattering amplitudes, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2011) 002.
  33. B. Eden, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, More on the duality correlators/amplitudes, Phys. Lett. B 709, 247 (2012).
  34. B. Eden, P. Heslop, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, The super-correlator/ super-amplitude duality: Part II, Nucl. Phys. B869, 378 (2013).
  35. B. Eden, P. Heslop, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, The super-correlator/ super-amplitude duality: Part I, Nucl. Phys. B869, 329 (2013).
  36. B. Eden, P. Heslop, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, Hidden symmetry of four-point correlation functions and amplitudes in N=4 sYM, Nucl. Phys. B862, 193 (2012).
  37. B. Eden, P. Heslop, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, Constructing the correlation function of four stress-tensor multiplets and the four-particle amplitude in N=4 SYM, Nucl. Phys. B862, 450 (2012).
  38. P. Heslop, The SAGEX review on scattering amplitudes, Chapter 8: Half BPS correlators, J. Phys. A 55, 443009 (2022).
  39. F. Gonzalez-Rey, I. Y. Park, and K. Schalm, A note on four point functions of conformal operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills, Phys. Lett. B 448, 37 (1999).
  40. B. Eden, P. S. Howe, C. Schubert, E. Sokatchev, and P. C. West, Four point functions in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at two loops, Nucl. Phys. B557, 355 (1999).
  41. B. Eden, P. S. Howe, C. Schubert, E. Sokatchev, and P. C. West, Simplifications of four point functions in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at two loops, Phys. Lett. B 466, 20 (1999).
  42. B. Eden, C. Schubert, and E. Sokatchev, Three loop four point correlator in N=4 sYM, Phys. Lett. B 482, 309 (2000).
  43. M. Bianchi, S. Kovacs, G. Rossi, and Y. S. Stanev, Anomalous dimensions in N=4 sYM theory at order g4, Nucl. Phys. B584, 216 (2000).
  44. B. Basso and L. J. Dixon, Gluing ladder Feynman diagrams into fishnets, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 071601 (2017).
  45. G. Brinkmann and B. D. McKay, Fast generation of planar graphs, Match Commun. Math. Comput. Chem. 58, 323 (2007), https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:116425311.
  46. N. Arkani-Hamed, J. L. Bourjaily, F. Cachazo, A. B. Goncharov, A. Postnikov, and J. Trnka, Grassmannian Geometry of Scattering Amplitudes (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2016).
  47. J. L. Bourjaily and S. Caron-Huot, Loops from cuts, Phys. Rev. D 108, 025008 (2023).
  48. J. L. Bourjaily, Computational tools for trees in gauge theory and gravity, arXiv:2312.17745.
  49. Many of the on-shell diagrams counted in Table 1 will vanish upon Fermionic integration. However, the number which vanish depends strongly on recursive choices made, but always appear to leave an O(1) fraction nonvanishing.

  50. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/kl4q-mpwp for details about data files.
  51. The reader may also download the data files from https://huggingface.co/datasets/shicanxin/correlator_12loops/tree/main.
  52. More precisely, we require any two intersecting threads to intersect normally (not tangentially) at a valency-4 vertex, and all threads along the same diagonal direction must lie in parallel.

  53. Put differently, a polygon-framed fishnet is obtained by choosing a set of diagonals [including the (i,i+2) diagonals already present] of a 2m-point antiprism and thickening each diagonal into a bunch of threads.

  54. S. Caron-Huot and F. Coronado, Ten dimensional symmetry of N=4 sYM correlators, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2022) 151.
  55. S. He, X. Jiang, J. Liu, and Y.-Q. Zhang, Notes on conformal integrals: Coulomb branch amplitudes, magic identities and bootstrap, Phys. Rev. D 112, 076012 (2025).
  56. R. G. Ambrosio, B. Eden, T. Goddard, P. Heslop, and C. Taylor, Local integrands for the five-point amplitude in planar N=4 sYM up to five loops, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2015) 116.
  57. P. Heslop and V.-V. Tran, Multi-particle amplitudes from the four-point correlator in planar N=4 sYM, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2018) 068.
  58. D. M. Hofman and J. Maldacena, Conformal collider physics: Energy and charge correlations, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2008) 012.
  59. A. V. Belitsky, S. Hohenegger, G. P. Korchemsky, E. Sokatchev, and A. Zhiboedov, Energy-energy correlations in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 071601 (2014).
  60. J. M. Henn, E. Sokatchev, K. Yan, and A. Zhiboedov, Energy-energy correlation in N=4 super Yang-Mills Theory at next-to-next-to-leading order, Phys. Rev. D 100, 036010 (2019).
  61. K. Yan and X. Zhang, Three-point energy correlator in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 021602 (2022).
  62. D. Chicherin, I. Moult, E. Sokatchev, K. Yan, and Y. Zhu, The collinear limit of the four-point energy correlator in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. D 110, L091901 (2024).
  63. S. He, X. Jiang, Q. Yang, and Y.-Q. Zhang, From squared amplitudes to energy correlators, arXiv:2408.04222.
  64. D. Chicherin, R. Doobary, B. Eden, P. Heslop, G. P. Korchemsky, L. Mason, and E. Sokatchev, Correlation functions of the chiral stress-tensor multiplet in N=4 sYM, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2015) 198.
  65. B. Eden, P. Heslop, and L. Mason, The correlahedron, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2017) 156.
  66. S. He, Y.-t. Huang, and C.-K. Kuo, All-loop geometry for four-point correlation functions, Phys. Rev. D 110, L081701 (2024).
  67. Ö. Gürdoǧan and V. Kazakov, New integrable 4D quantum field theories from strongly deformed planar N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 201602 (2016); 117, 259903(A) (2016).
  68. J. Caetano, O. Gürdoǧan, and V. Kazakov, Chiral limit of N=4 sYM and ABJM and integrable Feynman graphs, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2018) 077.
  69. D. Chicherin, V. Kazakov, F. Loebbert, D. Müller, and D.-l. Zhong, Yangian symmetry for bi-scalar loop amplitudes, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2018) 003.
  70. E. Olivucci, Hexagonalization of fishnet integrals. Part I. Mirror excitations, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2021) 204.
  71. E. Olivucci, Hexagonalization of fishnet integrals. Part II. Overlaps and multi-point correlators, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2024) 081.
  72. E. Olivucci and P. Vieira, Stampedes I: Fishnet OPE and octagon bootstrap with nonzero bridges, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2022) 017.
  73. E. Olivucci and P. Vieira, Null polygons in conformal gauge theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 221601 (2022).
  74. F. Aprile and E. Olivucci, Multipoint fishnet Feynman diagrams: Sequential splitting, Phys. Rev. D 108, L121902 (2023).
  75. T. Fleury and R. Pereira, Non-planar data of N=4 sYM, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2020) 003.
  76. D. Chicherin, R. Doobary, B. Eden, P. Heslop, G. P. Korchemsky, and E. Sokatchev, Bootstrapping correlation functions in N=4 sYM, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2016) 031.
  77. T. Bargheer, T. Fleury, and V. Gonçalves, Higher-point integrands in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, SciPost Phys. 15, 059 (2023).
  78. D. Chicherin, J. Drummond, P. Heslop, and E. Sokatchev, All three-loop four-point correlators of half-BPS operators in planar N=4 sYM, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2016) 053.
  79. D. Chicherin, A. Georgoudis, V. Gonçalves, and R. Pereira, All five-loop planar four-point functions of half-BPS operators in N=4 sYM, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2018) 069.
  80. S. Caron-Huot, F. Coronado, and B. Mühlmann, Determinants in self-dual N=4 sYM and twistor space, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2023) 008.

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation