The colour dependence of amplitudes

A bstract We describe how to construct a spanning set of linearly-independent, automatically orthogonal colour tensors for scattering amplitudes involving coloured particles transforming under arbitrary representations of any gauge theory, sufficient to all orders of perturbation theory (or beyond). These tensors are constructed from any choice of a single, trivalent tree graph, with Clebsch-Gordan coefficients at vertices connecting the external particles’ representations to internal, irreducible representations via tensor products. We describe how the colour dependence of any Feynman diagram can be systematically decomposed into these bases, and how amplitudes expressed in these bases compare with other choices of tensors such as multi-traces or ‘ f -graphs’.