Color ordering in QCD

Abstract

We derive color decompositions of arbitrary tree and one-loop QCD amplitudes into color ordered objects called primitive amplitudes. Furthermore, we derive general fermion flip and reversion identities spanning the null space among the primitive amplitudes and use them to prove that all color ordered tree amplitudes of massless QCD can be written as linear combinations of color ordered tree amplitudes of $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory.