Scattering Equations: From Projective Spaces to Tropical Grassmannians

Understand

We introduce a natural generalization of the scattering equations, which connect the space of Mandelstam invariants to that of points on ${\mathbb{CP}^1}$, to higher-dimensional projective spaces $\mathbb{CP}^{k-1}$.

• The standard, $k=2$ Mandelstam invariants, $s_{ab}$, are generalized to completely symmetric tensors $\textsf{s}_{a_1a_2\ldots a_k}$ subject to a `massless' condition $\textsf{s}_{a_1a_2\cdots a_{k-2}\,b\,b}=0$ and to `momentum conservation'.
• The scattering equations are obtained by constructing a potential function and computing its critical points.
• We mainly concentrate on the $k=3$ case: study solutions and define the generalization of biadjoint scalar amplitudes.