Exact Off Shell Sudakov Form Factor in N=4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory

Phys Rev Lett. 2023 Mar 3;130(9):091605. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.091605.

Abstract

We consider the Sudakov form factor in planar N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in the off shell kinematical regime, which can be achieved by considering the theory on its Coulomb branch. We demonstrate that for up to three loops both the infrared-divergent as well as the finite terms do exponentiate, with the coefficient accompanying log^{2}(m^{2}) determined by the octagon anomalous dimension Γ_{oct}. This behavior is in stark contrast to previous conjectural accounts in the literature. Together with the finite terms we observe that for up to three loops the logarithm of the Sudakov form factor is identical to twice the logarithm of the null octagon O_{0}, which was recently introduced within the context of integrability-based approaches to four point correlation functions with infinitely large R charges. The null octagon O_{0} is known in a closed form for all values of the 't Hooft coupling constant and kinematical parameters. We conjecture that the relation between O_{0} and the off shell Sudakov form factor will hold to all loop orders.