Discontinuites of BFKL amplitudes and the BDS ansatz

Abstract

We perform an examination of discontinuities of multiple production amplitudes, which are required for further development of the BFKL approach. It turns out that the discontinuities of 2 $\to$ 2 + n amplitudes obtained in the BFKL approach contradict to the BDS ansatz for amplitudes with maximal helicity violation in N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with large number of colours starting with n = 2. Explicit expressions for the discontinuities of the 2 $\to$ 3 and 2 $\to$ 4 amplitudes in the invariant mass of pairs of produced gluons are obtained in the planar N=4 SYM in the next-to-leading logarithmic approximation. These expressions can be used for checking the conjectured duality between the light-like Wilson loops and the MHV amplitudes.

26 pages