Scattering amplitudes in four- and six-dimensional gauge theories

We study scattering amplitudes in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), N=4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory and the six-dimensional N=(1,1) SYM theory, focusing on the symmetries of and relations between the tree-level scattering amplitudes in these three gauge theories. We derive the tree level and one-loop color decomposition of an arbitrary QCD amplitude into primitive amplitudes. Furthermore, we derive identities spanning the null space among the primitive amplitudes. We prove that every color ordered tree amplitude of massless QCD can be obtained from gluon-gluino amplitudes of N=4 SYM theory. Furthermore, we derive analytical formulae for all gluon-gluino amplitudes relevant for QCD. We compare the numerical efficiency and accuracy of evaluating these closed analytic formulae for color ordered QCD tree amplitudes to a numerically efficient implementation of the Berends-Giele recursion. We derive the symmetries of massive tree amplitudes on the coulomb branch of N=4 SYM theory, which in turn can be obtained from N=(1,1) SYM theory by dimensional reduction. Furthermore, we investigate the tree amplitudes of N=(1, 1) SYM theory and explain how analytical formulae can be obtained from a numerical implementation of the supersymmetric BCFW recursion relation and investigate a potential uplift of the massless tree amplitudes of N=4 SYM theory. Finally we study an alternative to dimensional regularization of N=4 SYM theory. The infrared divergences are regulated by masses obtained from a Higgs mechanism. The corresponding string theory set-up suggests that the amplitudes have an exact dual conformal symmetry. We confirm this expectation and illustrate the calculational advantages of the massive regulator by explicit calculations.