The EFT-Hedron

Abstract

We re-examine the constraints imposed by causality and unitarity on the low-energy effective field theory expansion of four-particle scattering amplitudes, exposing a hidden "totally positive" structure strikingly similar to the positive geometries associated with grassmannians and amplituhedra. This forces the infinite tower of higher-dimension operators to lie inside a new geometry we call the "EFThedron". We initiate a systematic investigation of the boundary structure of the EFThedron, giving infinitely many linear and non-linear inequalities that must be satisfied by the EFT expansion in any theory. We illustrate the EFThedron geometry and constraints in a wide variety of examples, including new consistency conditions on the scattering amplitudes of photons and gravitons in the real world.