What could be the generalization of Yangian symmetry of N=4 SUSY in TGD framework?

Lubos told for some time ago about last impressive steps in the understanding of N=4 maximally sypersymmetric YM theory possessing 4-D super-conformal symmetry. This theory is related by AdS/CFT duality to certain string theory in AdS₅× S⁵ background. Second stringy representation was discovered by Witten and based on Calabi-Yau manifold defined by twistors.

Note: I have added to the original posting few sections about a concrete Grassmannian realization of twistorial approach in TGD framework, and also a proposal for the physical interpretation of the Cartan algebra of Yangian algebra allowing to understand at the fundamental level how the mass spectrum of n-particle bound states could be understood in terms of the n-local charges of the Yangian algebra. I have not included all the material to this posting, and for the reader interested about what M⁸-H duality is and how it relates to the proposed generalization of Yangian symmetry, I recommend the pdf article What could be the generalization of Yangian symmetry of N=4 SYM in TGD framework?.

Background

I am outsider as far as concrete calculations in N=4 SUSY are considered and the following discussion of the background probably makes this obvious. I am ashamed;-).

The developments initiated by Witten with his Perturbative Gauge Theory As a String Theory In Twistor Space and led to Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) recursion relations for tree level amplitudes. The progress inspired the idea that the theory might be completely integrable meaning the existence of infinite-dimensional un-usual symmetry. This symmetry would be so called Yangian symmetry assigned to the super counterpart of the conformal group of 4-D Minkowski space.

Drumond, Henn, and Plefka represent in the article Yangian symmetry of scattering amplitudes in N = 4 super Yang-Mills theory an argument suggesting that the Yangian invariance of the scattering amplitudes ins an intrinsic property of planar N=4 super Yang Mills at least at tree level.

The last step in the progress was taken by Arkani-Hamed, Bourjaily, Cachazo, Carot-Huot, and Trnka and represented in the article The All-Loop Integrand For Scattering Amplitudes in Planar N=4 SYM. At same day there was also the article of Rutger Boels entitled On BCFW shifts of integrands and integrals in the archive. Arkani-Hamed and others argue that a full Yangian symmetry of the theory allows to generalize the BCFW recursion relation for tree amplitudes to all loop orders at planar limit (planar means that Feynman diagram allows imbedding to plane without intersecting lines). On mass shell scattering amplitudes are in question.

Yangian symmetry

The notion equivalent to that of Yangian was originally introduced by Faddeev and his group in the study of integrable systems. Yangians are Hopf algebras which can be assigned with Lie algebras as the deformations of their universal enveloping algebras. The elegant but rather cryptic looking definition is in terms of the modification of the relations for generating elements (see this). Besides ordinary product in the enveloping algebra there is co-product Δ which maps the elements of the enveloping algebra to its tensor product with itself. One can visualize product and co-product is in terms of particle reactions. Particle annihilation is analogous to annihilation of two particle so single one and co-product is analogous to the decay of particle to two. Δ allows to construct higher generators of the algebra.

Lie-algebra can mean here ordinary finite-dimensional simple Lie algebra, Kac-Moody algebra or Virasoro algebra. In the case of SUSY it means conformal algebra of M⁴ - or rather its super counterpart. Witten, Nappi and Dolan have described the notion of Yangian for super-conformal algebra in very elegant and and concrete manner in the article Yangian Symmetry in D=4 superconformal Yang-Mills theory. Also Yangians for gauge groups are discussed.

In the general case Yangian resembles Kac-Moody algebra with discrete index n replaced with a continuous one. Discrete index poses conditions on the Lie group and its representation (adjoint representation in the case of N=4 SUSY). One of the conditions conditions is that the tensor product R⊗R^* for representations involved contains adjoint representation only once. This condition is non-trivial. For SU(n) these conditions are satisfied for any representation. In the case of SU(2) the basic branching rule for the tensor product of representations implies that the condition is satisfied for the product of any representations.

Yangian algebra with discrete basis is in many respects analogous to Kac-Moody algebra. Now however the generators are labelled by non-negative integers labeling the light-like incoming and outgoing momenta of scattering amplitude whereas in in the case of Kac-Moody algebra also negative values are allowed. Note that only the generators with non-negative conformal weight appear in the construction of states of Kac-Moody and Virasoro representations so that the extension to Yangian makes sense.

The generating elements are labelled by the generators of ordinary conformal transformations acting in M⁴ and their duals acting in momentum space. These two sets of elements can be labelled by conformal weights n=0 and n=1 and and their mutual commutation relations are same as for Kac-Moody algebra. The commutators of n=1 generators with themselves are however something different for a non-vanishing deformation parameter h. Serre's relations characterize the difference and involve the deformation parameter h. Under repeated commutations the generating elements generate infinite-dimensional symmetric algebra, the Yangian. For h=0 one obtains just one half of the Virasoro algebra or Kac-Moody algebra. The generators with n>0 are n+1-local in the sense that they involve n+1-forms of local generators assignable to the ordered set of incoming particles of the scattering amplitude. This non-locality generalizes the notion of local symmetry and is claimed to be powerful enough to fix the scattering amplitudes completely.

How to generalize Yangian symmetry in TGD framework?

As far as concrete calculations are considered, I have nothing to say. I am just perplexed. It is however possible to keep discussion at general level and still say something interesting (as I hope!). The key question is whether it could be possible to generalize the proposed Yangian symmetry and geometric picture behind it to TGD framework.

1. The first thing to notice is that the Yangian symmetry of N=4 SUSY in question is quite too limited since it allows only single representation of the gauge group and requires massless particles. One must allow all representations and massive particles so that the representation of symmetry algebra must involve states with different masses, in principle arbitrary spin and arbitrary internal quantum numbers. The candidates are obvious:Kac-Moody algebras and Virasoro algebras and their super counterparts. Yangians indeed exist for arbitrary super Lie algebras. In TGD framework conformal algebra of Minkowski space reduces to Poincare algebra and its extension to Kac-Moody allows to have also massive states.

2. The formal generalization looks surprisingly straightforward at the formal level. In zero energy ontology one replaces point like particles with partonic two-surfaces appearing at the ends of light-like orbits of wormhole throats located to the future and past light-like boundaries of causal diamond (CD× CP₂ or briefly CD). Here CD is defined as the intersection of future and past directed light-cones. The polygon with light-like momenta is naturally replaced with a polygon with more general momenta in zero energy ontology and having partonic surfaces as its vertices. Non-point-likeness forces to replace the finite-dimensional super Lie-algebra with infinite-dimensional Kac-Moody algebras and corresponding super-Virasoro algebras assignable to partonic 2-surfaces.

3. This description replaces disjoint holomorphic surfaces in twistor space with partonic 2-surfaces at the boundaries of CD×CP₂ so that there seems to be a close analogy with Cachazo-Svrcek-Witten picture. These surfaces are connected by either light-like orbits of partonic 2-surface or space-like 3-surfaces at the ends of CD so that one indeed obtains the analog of polygon.

What does this then mean concretely (if this word can be used in this kind of context;-)?

1. At least it means that ordinary Super Kac-Moody and Super Virasoro algebras associated with isometries of M⁴ × CP₂ annihilating the scattering amplitudes must be extended to a co-algebras with a non-trivial deformation parameter. Kac-Moody group is thus the product of Poincare and color groups. This algebra acts as deformations of the light-like 3-surfaces representing the light-like orbits of particles which are extremals of Chern-Simon action with the constraint that weak form of electric-magnetic duality holds true. I know so little about the mathematical side that I cannot tell whether the condition that the product of the representations of Super-Kac-Moody and Super-Virasoro algebras ontains adjoint representation only once, holds true in this case. In any case, it would allow all representations of finite-dimensional Lie group in vertices whereas N=4 SUSY would allow only the adjoint.

2. Besides this ordinary kind of Kac-Moody algebra there is the analog of Super-Kac-Moody algebra associated with the light-cone boundary which is metrically 3-dimensional. The finite-dimensional Lie group is in this case replaced with infinite-dimensional group of symplectomorphisms of δ M⁴_+/- made local with respect to the internal coordinates of partonic 2-surface. A coset construction is applied to these two Virasoro algebras so that the differences of the corresponding Super-Virasoro generators and Kac-Moody generators annihilate physical states. This implies that the corresponding four-momenta are same: this expresses the equivalence of gravitational and inertial masses. A generalization of the Equivalence Principle is in question. This picture also justifies p-adic thermodynamics applied to either symplectic or isometry Super-Virasoro and giving thermal contribution to the vacuum conformal and thus to mass squared.

3. The construction of TGD leads also to other super-conformal algebras and the natural guess is that the Yangians of all these algebras annihilate the scattering amplitudes.

4. Obviously, already the starting point symmetries look formidable but they still act on single partonic surface only. The discrete Yangian associated with this algebra associated with the closed polygon defined by the incoming momenta and the negatives of the outgoing momenta acts in multi-local manner on scattering amplitudes. It might make sense to speak about polygons defined also by other conserved quantum numbers so that one would have generalized light-like curves in the sense that state are massless in 8-D sense.

Is there any hope about description in terms of Grassmannians?

At technical level the successes of the twistor approach rely on the observation that the amplitudes can be expressed in terms of very simple integrals over sub-manifolds of the space consisting k-dimensional planes of n-dimensional space defined by delta function appearing in the integrand. These integrals define super-conformal Yangian invariants appearing in twistorial amplitudes and the belief is that by a proper choice of the surfaces of the twistor space one can construct all invariants. One can construct also the counterparts of loop corrections by starting from tree diagrams and annihilating pair of particles by connecting the lines and quantum entangling the states at the ends in the manner dictated by the integration over loop momentum. These operations can be defined as operations for Grassmann integrals in general changing the values of n and k. This description looks extremely powerful and elegant and nosta importantly involves only the external momenta.

The obvious question is whether one could use similar invariants in TGD framework to construct the momentum dependence of amplitudes.

1. The first thing to notice is that the super algebras in question act on infinite-dimensional representations and basically in the world of classical worlds assigned to the partonic 2-surfaces correlated by the fact that they are associated with the same space-time surface. This does not promise anything very practical. On the other hand, one can hope that everything related to other than M⁴ degrees of freedom could be treated like color degrees of freedom in N=4 SYM and would boil down to indices labeling the quantum states. The Yangian conditions coming from isometry quantum numbers, color quantum numbers, and electroweak quantum numbers are of course expected to be highly non-trivial and could fix the coefficients of various singlets resulting in the tensor product of incoming and outgoing states.

2. The fact that incoming particles can be also massive seems to exclude the use of the twistor space. The following observation however raises hopes. The Dirac propagator for wormhole throat is massless propagator but for what I call pseudo momentum. It is still unclear how this momentum relates to the actual four-momentum. Could it be actually equal to it? The recent view about pseudo-momentum does not support this view but it is better to keep mind open. In any case this finding suggests that twistorial approach could work in in more or less standard form. What would be needed is a representation for massive incoming particles as bound states of massless partons. In particular, the massive states of super-conformal representations should allow this kind of description.

Could zero energy ontology allow to achieve this dream?

1. As far as divergence cancellation is considered, zero energy ontology suggests a totally new approach producing the basic nice aspects of QFT approach, in particular unitarity and coupling constant evolution. The big idea related to zero energy ontology is that all virtual particle particles correspond to wormhole throats, which are pairs of on mass shell particles. If their momentum directions are different, one obtains time-like continuum of virtual momenta and if the signs of energy are opposite one obtains also space-like virtual momenta. The on mass shell property for virtual partons (massive in general) implies extremely strong constraints on loops and one expect that only very few loops remain and that they are finite since loop integration reduces to integration over much lower-dimensional space than in the QFT approach. There are also excellent hopes about Cutkoski rules.

2. Could zero energy ontology make also possible to construct massive incoming particles from massless ones? Could one construct the representations of the super conformal algebras using only massless states so that at the fundamental level incoming particles would be massless and one could apply twistor formalism and build the momentum dependence of amplitudes using Grassmannian integrals.

   One could indeed construct on mass shell massive states from massless states with momenta along the same line but with three-momenta at opposite directions. Mass squared is given by M²= 4E² in the coordinate frame, where the momenta are opposite and of same magnitude. One could also argue that partonic 2-surfaces carrying quantum numbers of fermions and their superpartners serve as the analogs of point like massless particles and that topologically condensed fermions and gauge bosons plus their superpartners correspond to pairs of wormhole throats. Stringy objects would correspond to pairs of wormhole throats at the same space-time sheet in accordance with the fact that space-time sheet allows a slicing by string worlds sheets with ends at different wormhole throats and definining time like braiding.

The weak form of electric magnetic duality indeed supports this picture. To understand how, one must explain a little bit what the weak form of electric magnetic duality means.

1. Elementary particles correspond to light-like orbits of partonic 2-surfaces identified as 3-D surfaces at which the signature of the induced metric of space-time surface changes from Euclidian to Minkowskian and 4-D metric is therefore degenerate. The analogy with black hole horizon is obvious but only partial. Weak form of electric-magnetic duality states that the Kähler electric field at the wormhole throat and also at space-like 3-surfaces defining the ends of the space-time surface at the upper and lower light-like boundaries of the causal diamond is proportonial to Kähler magnetic field so that Kähler electric flux is proportional Kähler magnetic flux. This implies classical quantization of Kähler electric charge and fixes the value of the proportionality constant.

2. There are also much more profound implications. The vision about TGD as almost topological QFT suggests that Kähler function defining the Kähler geometry of the "world of classical worlds" (WCW) and identified as Kähler action for its preferred extremal reduces to the 3-D Chern-Simons action evaluted at wormhole throats and possible boundary components. Chern-Simons action would be subject to constraints. Wormhole throats and space-like 3-surfaces would represent extremals of Chern-Simons action restricted by the constraint force stating electric-magnetic duality (and realized in terms of Lagrange multipliers as usual).

   If one assumes that Kähler current and other conserved currents are proportional to current defining Beltrami flow whose flow lines by definition define coordinate curves of a globally defined coordinate, the Coulombic term of Kähler action vanishes and it reduces to Chern-Simons action if the weak form of electric-magnetic duality holds true. One obtains almost topological QFT. The absolutely essential attribute "almost" comes from the fact that Chern-Simons action is subject to constraints. As a consequence, one obtains non-vanishing four-momenta and WCW geometry is non-trivial in M⁴ degrees of freedom. Otherwise one would have only topological QFT not terribly interesting physically.

Consider now the question how one could understand stringy objects as bound states of massless particles.

1. The observed elementary particles are not Kähler monopoles and there much exist a mechanism neutralizing the monopole charge. The only possibility seems to be that there is opposite Kähler magnetic charge at second wormhole throat. The assumption is that in the case of color neutral particles this throat is at a distance of order intermediate gauge boson Compton length. This throat would carry weak isospin neutralizing that of the fermion and only electromagnetic charge would be visible at longer length scales. One could speak of electro-weak confinement. Also color confinement could be realized in analogous manner by requiring the cancellation of monopole charge for many-parton states only. What comes out are string like objects defined by Kähler magnetic fluxes and having magnetic monopoles at ends. Also more general objects with three strings branching from the vertex appear in the case of baryons. The natural guess is that the partons at the ends of strings and more general objects are massless for incoming particles but that the 3-momenta are in opposite directions so that stringy mass spectrum and representations of relevant super-conformal algebras are obtained. This description brings in mind the description of hadrons in terms of partons moving in parallel apart from transversal momentum about which only momentum squared is taken as observable.

2. Quite generally, one expects for the preferred extremals of Kähler action the slicing of space-time surface with string world sheets with stringy curves connecting wormhole throats. The ends of the stringy curves can be identified as light-like braid strands. Note that the strings themselves define a space-like braiding and the two braidings are in some sense dual. This has a concrete application in TGD inspired quantum biology, where time-like braiding defines topological quantum computer programs and the space-like braidings induced by it its storage into memory. Stringlike objects defining representations of super-conformal algebras must correspond to states involving at least two wormhole throats. Magnetic flux tubes connecting the ends of magnetically charged throats provide a particular realization of stringy on mass shell states. This would give rise to massless propagation at the parton level. The stringy quantization condition for mass squared would read as 4E²= n in suitable units for the representations of super-conformal algebra associated with the isometries. For pairs of throats of the same wormhole contact stringy spectrum does not seem plausible since the wormhole contact is in the direction of CP₂. One can however expect generation of small mass as deviation of vacuum conformal weight from half integer in the case of gauge bosons.

If this picture is correct, one might be able to determine the momentum dependence of the scattering amplitudes by replacing free fermions with pairs of monopoles at the ends of string and topologically condensed fermions gauge bosons with pairs of this kind of objects with wormhole throat replaced by a pair of wormhole throats. This would mean suitable number of doublings of the Grassmannian integrations with additional constraints on the incoming momenta posed by the mass shell conditions for massive states.

Could zero energy ontology make possible full Yangian symmetry?

The partons in the loops are on mass shell particles have a discrete mass spectrum but both signs of energy are possible for opposite wormhole throats. This implies that in the rules for constructing loop amplitudes from tree amplitudes, propagator entanglement is restricted to that corresponding to pairs of partonic on mass shell states with both signs of energy. As emphasized by Arkani Hamed and collaborators, it is the Grassmannian integrands and leading order singularities of N=4 SYM, which possess the full Yangian symmetry. The full integral over the loop momenta breaks the Yangian symmetry and brings in IR singularities. Zero energy ontologist finds it natural to ask whether QFT approach shows its inadequacy both via the UV divergences and via the loss of full Yangian symmetry. The restriction of virtual partons to discrete mass shells with positive or negative sign of energy imposes extremely powerful restrictions on loop integrals and resembles the restriction to leading order singularities. Could this restriction guarantee full Yangian symmetry and remove also IR singularities?

Could Yangian symmetry provide a new view about conserved quantum numbers?

The Yangian algebra has some properties which suggest a new kind of description for bound states. The Cartan algebra generators of n=0 and n=1 levels of Yangian algebra commute. Since the co-product Δ maps n=0 generators to n=1 generators and these in turn to generators with high value of n, it seems that they commute also with n≥1 generators. This applies to four-momentum, color isospin and color hyper charge, and also to the Virasoro generator L₀ acting on Kac-Moody algebra of isometries and defining mass squared operator.

Could one identify total four momentum and Cartan algebra quantum numbers as sum of contributions from various levels? If so, the four momentum and mass squared would involve besides the local term assignable to wormhole throats also n-local contributions. The interpretation in terms of n-parton bound states would be extremely attractive. n-local contribution would involve interaction energy. For instance, string like object would correspond to n=1 level and give n=2-local contribution to the momentum. For baryonic valence quarks one would have 3-local contribution corresponding to n=2 level. The Yangian view about quantum numbers could give a rigorous formulation for the idea that massive particles are bound states of massless particles.

For more details about the proposed generalization of Yangian symmetry, see the pdf article What could be the generalization of Yangian symmetry of N=4 SYM in TGD framework? or the new chapter Yangian Symmetry, Twistors, and TGD..