Gauge Boson Exchange in $AdS_{d+1}$

Abstract

We study the amplitude for exchange of massless gauge bosons between pairs of massive scalar fields in Anti-de Sitter space. In the AdS/CFT correspondence this amplitude describes the contribution of conserved flavor symmetry currents to 4-point functions of scalar operators in the boundary conformal theory. A concise, covariant (Y2K-compatible) derivation of the gauge boson propagator in $\AdS_{d+1}$ is given. Techniques are developed to calculate the two bulk integrals over AdS space leading to explicit expressions or convenient, simple integral representations for the amplitude. The amplitude contains leading power and sub-leading logarithmic singularities in the gauge boson channel and leading logarithms in the crossed channel. The new methods of this paper are expected to have other applications in the study of the Maldacena conjecture.