Planckian Energy Scattering and Surface Terms in the Gravitational Action

Inspired by the problem of Planckian scattering we describe a classical effective field theory for weak ultra relativistic scattering in which field propagation is instantaneous and transverse and the particles' equations of motion localize to the instant of passing. An analogy with the non-relativistic (post-Newtonian) approximation is stressed. The small parameter is identified and power counting rules are established. The theory is applied to reproduce the leading scatteri...

We consider the relativistic scattering of unequal-mass scalar particles through graviton exchange in the small-angle high-energy regime. We show the self-consistency of expansion around the eikonal limit and compute the scattering amplitude up to the next-to-leading power correction of the light particle energy, including gravitational effects of the same order. The first power correction is suppressed by a single power of the ratio of momentum transfer to the energy of the ...

The post-Minkowskian expansion of Einstein's general theory of relativity has received much attention in recent years due to the possibility of harnessing the computational power of modern amplitude calculations in such a classical context. In this brief review, we focus on the post-Minkowskian expansion as applied to the two-body problem in general relativity without spin, and we describe how relativistic quantum field theory can be used to greatly simplify analytical calcul...

After a short introduction to the general Quantum Gravity problem, we compare a result from the S-matrix description of gravitational interaction due to Amati, Ciafaloni and Veneziano (ACV) with classical General Relativity results. In Chapter 1, we introduce the metric produced by a massless particle moving at the speed of light. In Chapter 2, we review ACV's semiclassical approach to gravitation and show some of its result. In Chapter 3, we detail the computation of gravita...

Viewing gravitational energy-momentum as equal by observation, but different in essence from inertial energy-momentum naturally leads to the gauge theory of volume-preserving diffeormorphisms of a four-dimensional in- ner space. To analyse scattering in this theory the gauge field is coupled to two Dirac fields with different masses. Based on a generalized LSZ reduction formula the S-matrix element for scattering of two Dirac particles in the gravitational limit and the corre...

In this text we outline the motivation for developping a quantum $S$-matrix approach for the classical gravitational two-body scattering. As an application we briefly present the derivation of black-hole metrics in various dimensions.

Scattering at transplanckian energies offers model independent tests of TeV scale gravity. Black-hole production is one spectacular signal, though a full calculation of the cross section is not yet available. Another signal is given by gravitational elastic scattering, which is maybe less spectacular but which can be nicely computed in the forward region using the eikonal approximation. In this talk I discuss the distinctive signatures of eikonalized scattering at future acce...

Planck scale physics represents a future challenge, located between particle physics and general relativity. The Planck scale marks a threshold beyond which the old description of spacetime breaks down and conceptually new phenomena must appear. In the last years, increased efforts have been made to examine the phenomenology of quantum gravity, even if the full theory is still unknown.

We investigate the hypothesized existence of an S-matrix for gravity, and some of its expected general properties. We first discuss basic questions regarding existence of such a matrix, including those of infrared divergences and description of asymptotic states. Distinct scattering behavior occurs in the Born, eikonal, and strong gravity regimes, and we describe aspects of both the partial wave and momentum space amplitudes, and their analytic properties, from these regimes....

It may be widely believed that probing short-distance physics is limited by the presence of the Planck energy scale above which scale any information is cloaked behind a horizon. If this hypothesis is correct, we could observe quantum behavior of gravity only through a black hole of Planck mass. We numerically show that in a scattering of two black holes in the 5-dimensional spacetime, a visible domain, whose curvature radius is much shorter than the Planck length, can be for...