Duality and multi-gluon scattering

For the six-gluon scattering process we give explicit and simple expressions for the amplitude and its square. To achieve this we use an analogy with string theories to identify a unique procedure for writing the multi-gluon scattering amplitudes in terms of a sum of gauge invariant dual sub-amplitudes multiplied by an appropriate color (Chan-Paton) factor. The sub-amplitudes defined in this way are invariant under cyclic permutations, satisfy powerful identities which relate different non-cyclic permutations and factorize in the soft gluon limit, the two-gluon collinear limit and on multi-gluon poles. Also, to leading order in the number of colors these sub-amplitudes sum incoherently in the square of the full matrix element. The results contained here are important for Monte Carlo studies of multi-jet processes at hadron colliders as well as for understanding the general structure of QCD. (orig.)