Recently, by using the known structure of one-loop scattering amplitudes for gluons in Yang-Mills theory, a recursion relation for tree-level scattering amplitudes has been deduced. Here, we give a short and direct proof of this recursion relation based on properties of tree-level amplitudes only.

We present new recursion relations for tree amplitudes in gauge theory that give very compact formulas. Our relations give any tree amplitude as a sum over terms constructed from products of two amplitudes of fewer particles multiplied by a Feynman propagator.The two amplitudes in each term are physical, in the sense that all particles are on-shell and momentum conservation is preserved. This is striking, since it is just like adding certain factorization limits of the original amplitude to build up the full answer. As examples, we recompute all known tree-level amplitudes of up to seven gluons and show that our recursion relations naturally give their most compact forms. We give a new result for an eight-gluon amplitude, A(1 + , 2 − , 3 + , 4 − , 5 + , 6 − , 7 + , 8 − ). We show how to build any amplitude in terms of three-gluon amplitudes only.

One-loop amplitudes of gluons in N = 4 gauge theory can be written as linear combinations of known scalar box integrals with coefficients that are rational functions. In this paper we show how to use generalized unitarity to basically read off the coefficients.The generalized unitarity cuts we use are quadruple cuts. These can be directly applied to the computation of four-mass scalar integral coefficients, and we explicitly present results in next-to-next-to-MHV amplitudes. For scalar box functions with at least one massless external leg we show that by doing the computation in signature (− − ++) the coefficients can also be obtained from quadruple cuts, which are not useful in Minkowski signature.As examples, we reproduce the coefficients of some one-, two-, and three-mass scalar box integrals of the seven-gluon next-to-MHV amplitude, and we compute several classes of three-mass and two-mass-hard coefficients of next-to-MHV amplitudes to all multiplicities.

We develop a systematic and efficient method of counting single-trace and multi-trace BPS operators with two supercharges, for world-volume gauge theories of N D-brane probes for both N → ∞ and finite N . The techniques are applicable to generic singularities, orbifold, toric, non-toric, complete intersections, et cetera, even to geometries whose precise field theory duals are not yet known. The socalled "Plethystic Exponential" provides a simple bridge between (1) the defining equation of the Calabi-Yau, (2) the generating function of single-trace BPS operators and (3) the generating function of multi-trace operators. Mathematically, fascinating and intricate inter-relations between gauge theory, algebraic geometry, combinatorics and number theory exhibit themselves in the form of plethystics and syzygies.