A new technique called "surfaceology" (described in the linked Quanta magazine article) provides a profoundly more efficient method than the path integrals implied by Feynman diagrams to calculate the probability of Standard Model interactions.
It is also useful in doing calculations in "double copy" approaches to quantum gravity, in which on does a calculation in QCD and "squares" it, to get an answer for a parallel problem in quantum gravity.
Surfaceology flows from the same line of reasoning as the amplituhedron of theoretical physics superstar Nima Arkani-Hamed (which only works for supersymmetry theories) and was devised by a junior member of his research group, Carolina Figueiredo, in 2022, with a pair of preprints (here and here) first published in September of 2023. But, it works for real Standard Model particles and not just for simplified theoretical physics models.
Further developments in the winter of 2023-2024 described outcomes that were considered with many calculations in Feynman diagram calculations that eventually revealed that these outcomes were effectively impossible called "hidden zeros." Figueiredo and Arkani-Hamed, along with Qu Cao, Jin Dong, and Song He, posted theses findings in a series of preprints.
More efficient calculations that this method facilitates could turn many particle physics and quantum gravity problems that were theoretically possible to calculate, but as a practical matter, impossible to numerically work out, into practically solvable problems, and can very difficult calculations vastly easier to solve.
Hat tip to 4Gravitons.
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