Operator Product Expansion for Form Factors

We propose an operator product expansion for planar form factors of local operators in 𝒩=4 SYM theory. This expansion is based on the dual conformal symmetry of these objects or, equivalently, the conformal symmetry of their dual description in terms of periodic Wilson loops. A form factor is decomposed into a sequence of known pentagon transitions and a new universal object that we call the “form factor transition.” This transition is subject to a set of nontrivial bootstrap constraints, which are sufficient to fully determine it. We evaluate the form factor transition for maximally helicity-violating form factors of the chiral half of the stress tensor supermultiplet at leading order in perturbation theory and use it to produce operator product expansion predictions at any loop order. We match the one-loop and two-loop predictions with data available in the literature.