String Theory seminar - Miguel Paulos Seminar

In this talk I will describe recent work aiming to reinvigorate the 50 year old S-matrix program, which aims to constrain scattering of massive particles non-perturbatively. I will begin by considering quantum fields in anti-de Sitter space and show that one can extract information about the S-matrix by considering correlators in conformally invariant theories. The latter can be studied with "bootstrap" techniques, which allow us to constrain the S-matrix. In particular, in 1+1D one obtains bounds which are saturated by known integrable models. I will also show that it is also possible to directly constrain the S-matrix, without using the CFT crutch, by using crossing symmetry and unitarity. This alternative method is simpler and gives results in agreement with the previous approach. Both techniques are generalizable to higher dimensions.