Claude computes nine-loop scattering amplitude: a one-sentence prompt and a few thousand dollars break a theoretical physics record

## Claude computes a nine-loop scattering amplitude Anthropic announced that Claude, running continuously for several days on its science platform Claude Science with minimal human supervision, computed the nine-loop six-particle scattering amplitude in planar N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, a recognized frontier problem in the study of scattering amplitudes in theoretical physics. **Key points** - **Breaking a three-year record**: The previous record was eight loops, set in 2023 by Lance Dixon's team at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Dixon personally and independently verified Claude's result, calling it "quite an impressive win" that an LLM could carry out every step of this complex workflow and orchestrate the computing resources. - **Started with one sentence**: Researchers gave Claude only a one-sentence task description, and the "guidance" that followed consisted mostly of saying "continue" over and over. Converted to ordinary user pricing, the total cost was roughly one to two thousand dollars, of which the numerical computation accounted for only about $100 (equivalent to 96 CPUs running for a week). - **Origin of a public challenge**: Physicist and science writer Matt von Hippel had publicly issued a challenge a few weeks earlier, asking AI companies to solve an open particle physics problem on an academic-level budget. Claude took it up and succeeded. > Source: [read the original](https://dataconomy.com/2026/09/28/claude-ai-nine-loop-particle-physics-challenge/). This text is a summary for reference only.