title: Collinear limit of scattering amplitudes at strong coupling.
abstract: In this Letter, we consider the collinear limit of gluon scattering amplitudes in planar N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory at strong coupling. We argue that in this limit scattering amplitudes map into correlators of twist fields in the two dimensional nonlinear O(6) sigma model, similar to those appearing in recent studies of entanglement entropy. We provide evidence for this assertion by combining the intuition springing from the string world-sheet picture and the predictions coming from the operator product expansion series. One of the main implications of these considerations is that scattering amplitudes receive equally important contributions at strong coupling from both the minimal string area and its fluctuations in the sphere.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, École Normale Supérieure, Paris 75005, France.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Basso
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA.
authors.forename: Amit
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sever
authors.affiliation: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vieira