In theory N=4 super Yang-Mills, the direct computation had been capped at eight loops since the work of Lance Dixon. Fable 5.1 went to nine, for 96 processors for a week and a few thousand dollars.
The calculation of diffusion amplitudes in theory N=4 super Yang-Mills serves as a test ground for theoretical particle physics: the model is forced enough to remain computable, rich enough for each additional order to cost very much. The direct calculation record was eight loops, set by Lance Dixon in 2023. He has just moved to nine, obtained by Fable 5.1 on Claude Science, Anthropic's platform for scientists.
The challenge had been launched by Matt von Hippel, a former theorist physicist who passed to writing; The result fell in August 2026, less than a month later. Liam Fitzpatrick and Siddharth Mishra-Sharma, at Anthropic, piloted the calculation. The means committed are modest in terms of the result: 96 processors for one week, for a total invoice of the order of one to two thousand dollars — the only bootstrap method having cost about 100 dollars.
Important point for the credibility of the result: Lance Dixon, professor at SLAC and Stanford and holder of the previous record, independently validated the calculation. In parallel, Song He's team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences achieved a competing result by relying on GPT-6, a sign that this type of heavy symbolic calculation is becoming a test bench between laboratories.
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