Gluon Scattering in AdS from CFT

TL;DR

This work develops a universal MRV-based bootstrap for tree-level holographic four-point functions of super gluons in a wide class of non-maximally supersymmetric SCFTs, fixing all amplitudes solely from symmetry, spectrum, and crossing data. By working in Mellin space and leveraging MRV zeros, the authors reproduce a contact-term-free sum of multiplet exchanges with coefficients tied to OPE data and flavor central charges, and they verify consistency with flat-space gluon amplitudes. Across 4d, 5d, 6d, and flavored brane setups, they uncover striking structures: Parisi-Sourlas-like dimensional reductions, an eight-dimensional hidden conformal symmetry, and an AdS version of color-kinematic duality, all indicating deep organizational principles behind AdS amplitudes in less-supersymmetric contexts. The results yield extensive protected and unprotected SCFT data, providing a wealth of information for cross-checks with localization, bootstrap, and potential higher-point or loop generalizations.

Abstract

We present a systematic study of holographic correlators in a vast array of SCFTs with non-maximal superconformal symmetry. These theories include 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ SCFTs from D3-branes near F-theory singularities, 5d Seiberg exceptional theories and 6d E-string theory, as well as 3d and 4d phenomenological models with probe flavor branes. We consider current multiplets and their generalizations with higher weights, dual to massless and massive super gluons in the bulk. At leading order in the inverse central charge expansion, connected four-point functions of these operators correspond to tree-level gluon scattering amplitudes in AdS. We show that all such tree-level four-point amplitudes in all these theories are fully fixed by symmetries and consistency conditions and explicitly construct them. Our results encode a wealth of SCFT data and exhibit various interesting emergent structures. These include Parisi-Sourlas-like dimensional reductions, hidden conformal symmetry and an AdS version of the color-kinematic duality.