Introduction

Scattering amplitudes sit at the intersection of experimental physics, theoretical physics, and pure mathematics. Besides being directly useful at particle colliders or gravitational wave detectors, their surprising simplicity revealed symmetries and dualities hidden by traditional Lagrangian perspectives, and hints towards a completely new approach to quantum field theory.

This course will motivate why they are interesting objects to study, introduce the relevant tools, and describe several recent important results. Various topics will be discussed, such as

- the modern on-shell S-matrix program

- why gravity = (Yang-Mills)^2

- the positive geometry of scattering amplitudes and the Amplituhedron

- the bootstrap approach, from uniqueness theorems to the EFThedron and moment problems

Some knowledge of QFT will be useful but the course will attempt to be self contained.

Lecturer Intro

Laurentiu Rodina obtained his PhD from Princeton University, under the supervision of Nima Arkani-Hamed. He was a postdoctoral fellow at CEA Saclay-Paris and National Taiwan University, and a Marie Curie Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He joined BIMSA as assistant research fellow in 2023. His research is focused on bootstrap approaches in QFT and CFT: describing the space of theories consistent with fundamental physical principles.