Unitarity bounds and sum rules in the SMEFT

We present a comprehensive reassessment of perturbative unitarity bounds in the dimension-six Standard Model Effective Field Theory, exploiting a new formalism based on spinor-helicity techniques to derive partial-wave unitarity bounds for generic $N\to M$ scattering amplitudes. We find that, in several cases, these theoretical constraints are already competitive with, or even stronger than, the corresponding experimental bounds for energy scales above a few TeV. This is especially the case for four-fermion operators under realistic flavor assumptions, where unitarity bounds can be further strengthened by exploiting sum rules. These results provide a valuable and timely contribution towards the ambitious program of new-physics searches with minimal theoretical priors supplemented by restrictive, yet general, first-principles criteria.