Scattering Forms and the Positive Geometry of Kinematics, Color and the Worldsheet

TL;DR

This paper introduces a geometric framework where scattering amplitudes are represented as differential forms on kinematic space, revealing deep connections with positive geometries like associahedra and providing new insights into amplitude properties.

Contribution

It proposes a novel geometric interpretation of amplitudes as forms on kinematic space, linking associahedra to scattering processes and elucidating color-kinematics duality.

Findings

Associations between scattering forms and associahedra in kinematic space

A geometric derivation of the bi-adjoint CHY formula

Color-kinematics duality explained through geometry

Abstract

The search for a theory of the S-Matrix has revealed surprising geometric structures underlying amplitudes ranging from the worldsheet to the amplituhedron, but these are all geometries in auxiliary spaces as opposed to kinematic space where amplitudes live. In this paper, we propose a novel geometric understanding of amplitudes for a large class of theories. The key is to think of amplitudes as differential forms directly on kinematic space. We explore this picture for a wide range of massless theories in general spacetime dimensions. For the bi-adjoint cubic scalar, we establish a direct connection between its "scattering form" and a classic polytope--the associahedron--known to mathematicians since the 1960's. We find an associahedron living naturally in kinematic space, and the tree amplitude is simply the "canonical form" associated with this "positive geometry". Basic physical properties such as locality, unitarity and novel "soft" limits are fully determined by the geometry. Furthermore, the moduli space for the open string worldsheet has also long been recognized as an associahedron. We show that the scattering equations act as a diffeomorphism between this old "worldsheet associahedron" and the new "kinematic associahedron", providing a geometric interpretation and novel derivation of the bi-adjoint CHY formula. We also find "scattering forms" on kinematic space for Yang-Mills and the Non-linear Sigma Model, which are dual to the color-dressed amplitudes despite having no explicit color factors. This is possible due to a remarkable fact--"Color is Kinematics"--whereby kinematic wedge products in the scattering forms satisfy the same Jacobi relations as color factors. Finally, our scattering forms are well-defined on the projectivized kinematic space, a property that provides a geometric origin for color-kinematics duality.