High energy scattering in gravity and
supergravity.

Giddings, S.B.; Schmidt-Sommerfeld, M.; Andersen, J.R.

Abstract

We investigate features of perturbative gravity and supergravity by studying scattering in the ultra-Planckian limit, and sharpen arguments that the dynamics is governed by long-distance physics. A simple example capturing aspects of the eikonal resummation suggests why short-distance phenomena and, in particular, divergences or nonrenormalizability do not necessarily play a central role in this regime. A more profound problem is apparently unitarity. These considerations can be illustrated by showing that known gravity and supergravity amplitudes have the same long-distance behavior, despite the extra light states of supergravity, and this serves as an important check on long-range dynamics in a context where perturbative amplitudes are finite. We also argue that these considerations have other important implications: they obstruct both probing the conjectured phenomenon of asymptotic safety through a physical scattering process, and ultra-Planckian scattering exhibiting Regge behavior. These arguments sharpen the need to find a nonperturbative completion of gravity with mechanisms which restore unitarity in the strong gravity regime.

Citation

Giddings, S., Schmidt-Sommerfeld, M., & Andersen, J. (2010). supergravity. Physical Review D, 82(10), Article 104022. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.82.104022

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2010
• Deposit Date: Nov 19, 2012
• Journal: Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation, and Cosmology
• Print ISSN: 1550-7998
• Electronic ISSN: 1550-2368
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 82
• Issue: 10
• Article Number: 104022
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.82.104022
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1470829