Paper detail

Two-loop supergravity on AdS$_5\times$S$^5$ from CFT

We describe a construction of the two-loop amplitude of four graviton supermultiplets in AdS$_5\times$S$^5$. We start from an ansatz for a preamplitude from which we generate the full amplitude under the action of a specific Casimir operator. The ansatz captures a recent ansatz of Huang and Yuan and we confirm their result through similar constraints. The form of the result suggests that all ambiguities are captured by the preamplitude which determines the result up to tree-level ambiguities only. We identify a class of four-dimensional `zigzag' integrals which are perfectly adapted to describing the leading logarithmic discontinuity to all orders. We also observe that a bonus crossing symmetry of the preamplitude follows from the transformation properties of the Casimir operator. Combined with the zigzag integrals this allows us to construct a crossing symmetric function with the correct leading logarithmic discontinuities in all channels. From the two-loop result we extract an explicit expression for the two-loop correction to the anomalous dimensions of twist-four operators of generic spin which includes dependence on (alternating) nested harmonic sums up to weight three. We also revisit the prescription of the bulk-point limit of AdS amplitudes and show how it recovers the full flat-space amplitude, not just its discontinuity. With this extended notion of the bulk-point limit we reproduce the scale-dependent logarithmic threshold terms of type IIB string theory in flat-space.