BCJ duality and double copy in the closed string sector

Abstract

This paper is focused on the loop-level understanding of the Bern-Carrasco- Johansson double copy procedure that relates the integrands of gauge theory and gravity scattering amplitudes. At four points, the first non-trivial example of that construction is one-loop amplitudes in N =2 super-Yang-Mills theory and the symmetric realization of N = 4 matter-coupled supergravity. Our approach is to use both field and string theory in parallel to analyze these amplitudes. The closed string provides a natural framework to analyze the BCJ construction, in which the left- and right-moving sectors separately create the color and kinematics at the integrand level. At tree level, in a five-point example, we show that the Mafra-Schlotterer-Stieberger procedure gives a new direct proof of the colorkinematics double copy. We outline the extension of that argument to n points. At loop level, the field-theoretic BCJ construction of N =2 SYM amplitudes introduces new terms, unexpected from the string theory perspective. We discuss to what extent we can relate them to the terms coming from the interactions between left- and right-movers in the string-theoretic gravity construction.