Quantum Field Theory (QFT) provides the essential background for formulating the standard model of elementary particles and, moreover, practically all other theories attempting to explore the physical laws of nature at the sub-atomic level. One of the main observables in QFT are the scattering amplitudes, physical quantities which encode the information of the scattering process of particles. Accordingly, having authentic, well-defined and feasible prescriptions for the calculations of amplitudes is of huge importance to theoretical physicists. Actual calculations show that the text-book prescription, the Feynman method, besides in general being very cumbersome also hides some of the beautiful mathematical features of amplitudes. The last decade has seen tremendous efforts and achievements to improve such calculations, particularly in supersymmetric gauge theories, which have also led to better understanding of QFT itself. Among the known physically and mathematically interesting quantum field theories is perturbative gravity and its supersymmetric version, N=8 supergravity- much less understood than gauge theory. Following the developments in gauge theory, this dissertation mainly aims at exploring scattering amplitudes in gravity as a quantum field theory, using the modern approaches to QFT. The goal is not only to improve our understanding of gravity amplitudes by applying part of the known modern methods of calculations to it but also to introduce and develop new ones.

Im ersten Teil dieser Dissertation untersuchen wir Formfaktoren von allgemeinen eichinvarianten lokalen zusammengesetzten Operatoren in der N=4 Super-Yang-Mills-Theorie bei verschiedenen Schleifenordnungen und Anzahlen externer Felder. Wir zeigen, wie Masseschalen-Methoden zu ihrer Berechnung genutzt werden können, und extrahieren aus ihnen insbesondere den Dilatationsoperator. Wir untersuchen auch die Eigenschaften der zugehörigen Rückstandsfunktionen. Des Weiteren verallgemeinern wir Masseschalen-Diagramme, Graßmann-Integrale und die integrabilitätsinspirierte Technik der R-Operatoren zur Anwendung auf Formfaktoren, wobei wir uns auf das Beispiel des chiralen Teils des Energie-Impuls-Tensors konzentrieren. Im zweiten Teil untersuchen wir die Beta- und die Gamma-i-Deformation. Bei diesen handelt es sich um die allgemeinste supersymmetrische beziehungsweise nicht-supersymmetrische feldtheoretische Deformation von N=4 Super-Yang-Mills-Theorie, welche auf der Ebene des asymptotischen Bethe-Ansatzes integrabel sind. Hierbei tritt ein neuer Effekt der endlichen Systemgröße auf, der durch Doppelspurstrukturen in der deformierten Lagrange-Dichte hervorgerufen wird und den wir Vorwickeln nennen. Während die Beta-Deformation für sich an ihren nicht-verschwindenden IR-Fixpunkten befindliche Doppelspurkopplungen konform invariant ist, weist die Gamma-i-Deformation rennende Doppelspurkopplungen ohne Fixpunkte auf, was die konforme Invarianz selbst im planaren Limes bricht. Nichtsdestotrotz erlaubt die Gamma-i-Deformation hochgradig nicht-triviale Tests der Integrabilität bei beliebig hohen Schleifenordnungen. / In the first part of this thesis, we study form factors of general gauge-invariant local composite operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory at various loop orders and for various numbers of external legs. We show how to use on-shell methods for their calculation and in particular extract the dilatation operator from the result. We also investigate the properties of the corresponding remainder functions. Moreover, we extend on-shell diagrams, a Graßmannian integral formulation and an integrability-based construction via R-operators to form factors, focussing on the chiral part of the stress-tensor supermultiplet as an example. In the second part, we study the beta- and the gamma-i-deformation, which were respectively shown to be the most general supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric field-theory deformations of N=4 super Yang-Mills theory that are integrable at the level of the asymptotic Bethe ansatz. For these theories, a new kind of finite-size effect occurs, which we call prewrapping and which emerges from double-trace structures that are required in the deformed Lagrangians. While the beta-deformation is conformal when the double-trace couplings are at their non-trivial IR fixed points, the gamma-i-deformation has running double-trace couplings without fixed points, which break conformal invariance even in the planar theory. Nevertheless, the gamma-i-deformation allows for highly non-trivial field-theoretic tests of integrability at arbitrarily high loop orders.