Three-Reggeon exchange in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM to leading logarithmic accuracy

Abstract

We study eight-point amplitudes in the planar $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super Yang-Mills theory in multi-Regge kinematics in the Mandelstam region that receives contributions from both two- and three-Reggeon exchange. We use an effective field theory approach to compute the leading contribution from three-Reggeon exchange, and we explicitly evaluate the relevant diagrams up to four loops. We also propose a compact Fourier-Mellin representation for the contribution from two-Reggeon exchange in this region which involves the same ingredients as in other Mandelstam regions and can in principle be evaluated to any desired order in perturbation theory. To validate our proposal, we show that we can reproduce the multi-Regge limit of the known results for octagons up to three loops. We then combine the contributions from two- and three-Reggeon exchange to obtain novel results for octagons in MRK up to next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy at four loops for the maximally helicity violating (MHV) configuration, and up to three loops for non-MHV contributions. We also discuss how our result can be extended to more particles, and we present the contribution from three-Reggeon exchange for three-loop MHV amplitudes with an arbitrary number of legs.