Four-Gluon Scattering at Three Loops, Infrared Structure, and the Regge Limit

Abstract

We compute the three-loop four-gluon scattering amplitude in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, including its full color dependence. Our result is the first complete computation of a nonplanar four-particle scattering amplitude to three loops in four-dimensional gauge theory and consequently provides highly nontrivial data for the study of nonplanar scattering amplitudes. We present the amplitude as a Laurent expansion in the dimensional regulator to finite order, with coefficients composed of harmonic polylogarithms of uniform transcendental weight, and simple rational prefactors. Our computation provides an independent check of a recent result for three-loop corrections to the soft anomalous dimension matrix that predicts the general infrared singularity structure of massless gauge theory scattering amplitudes. Taking the Regge limit of our result, we determine the three-loop gluon Regge trajectory. We also find agreement with very recent predictions for subleading logarithms.