Causal Diamonds, Cluster Polytopes and Scattering Amplitudes

Understand

The "amplituhedron" for tree-level scattering amplitudes in the bi-adjoint $\phi^3$ theory is given by the ABHY associahedron in kinematic space, which has been generalized to give a realization for all finite-type cluster algebra polytopes, labelled by Dynkin diagrams.

• In this letter we identify a simple physical origin for these polytopes, associated with an interesting (1+1)-dimensional causal structure in kinematic space, along with solutions to the wave equation in this kinematic "spacetime" with a natural positivity property.
• The notion of time evolution in this kinematic spacetime can be abstracted away to a certain "walk", associated with any acyclic quiver, remarkably yielding a finite cluster polytope for the case of Dynkin quivers.
• The ${\cal A}_{n{-}3},{\cal B}_{n{-}1}/{\cal C}_{n{-}1}$ and ${\cal D}_n$ polytopes are the amplituhedra for $n$-point tree amplitudes, one-loop tadpole diagrams, and full integrand of one-loop amplitudes.