Conformal Anomaly for Amplitudes in N=6 Superconformal Chern-Simons Theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the conformal anomaly in three-dimensional N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons theory, revealing symmetry-breaking at specific momentum configurations and confirming non-zero one-loop six-point amplitudes through explicit calculations.

Contribution

It demonstrates the presence of conformal anomalies in amplitudes and predicts non-vanishing one-loop six-point amplitudes, supported by explicit unitarity-based calculations.

Findings

Anomalous terms occur only for singular momentum configurations.

Symmetries predict a non-zero one-loop six-point amplitude.

Explicit calculations confirm the non-vanishing amplitude.

Abstract

Scattering amplitudes in three-dimensional N=6 Chern-Simons theory are shown to be non-invariant with respect to the free representation of the osp(6|4) symmetry generators. At tree and one-loop level these "anomalous" terms occur only for non-generic, singular configurations of the external momenta and can be used to determine the form of the amplitudes. In particular we show that the symmetries predict that the one-loop six-point amplitude is non-vanishing and confirm this by means of an explicit calculation using generalized unitarity methods. We comment on the implications of this finding for any putative Wilson loop/amplitude duality in N=6 Chern-Simons theory.