No Arabic abstract
We establish a connection between the ultra-Planckian scattering amplitudes in field and string theory and unitarization by black hole formation in these scattering processes. Using as a guideline an explicit microscopic theory in which the black hole represents a bound-state of many soft gravitons at the quantum critical point, we were able to identify and compute a set of perturbative amplitudes relevant for black hole formation. These are the tree-level N-graviton scattering S-matrix elements in a kinematical regime (called classicalization limit) where the two incoming ultra-Planckian gravitons produce a large number N of soft gravitons. We compute these amplitudes by using the Kawai-Lewellen-Tye relations, as well as scattering equations and string theory techniques. We discover that this limit reveals the key features of the microscopic corpuscular black hole N-portrait. In particular, the perturbative suppression factor of a N-graviton final state, derived from the amplitude, matches the non-perturbative black hole entropy when N reaches the quantum criticality value, whereas final states with different value of N are either suppressed or excluded by non-perturbative corpuscular physics. Thus we identify the microscopic reason behind the black hole dominance over other final states including non-black hole classical object. In the parameterization of the classicalization limit the scattering equations can be solved exactly allowing us to obtain closed expressions for the high-energy limit of the open and closed superstring tree-level scattering amplitudes for a generic number N of external legs. We demonstrate matching and complementarity between the string theory and field theory in different large-s and large-N regimes.
Quantum scattering amplitudes for massive matter have received new attention in connection to classical calculations relevant to gravitational-wave physics. Amplitude methods and insights are now employed for precision computations of observables needed for describing the gravitational dynamics of bound massive objects such as black holes. An important direction is the inclusion of spin effects needed to accurately describe rotating (Kerr) black holes. Higher-spin amplitudes introduced by Arkani-Hamed, Huang and Huang at three points have by now a firm connection to the effective description of Kerr black-hole physics. The corresponding Compton higher-spin amplitudes remain however an elusive open problem. Here we draw from results of the higher-spin literature and show that physical insights can be used to uniquely fix the Compton amplitudes up to spin 5/2, by imposing a constraint on a three-point higher-spin current that is a necessary condition for the existence of an underlying unitary theory. We give the unique effective Lagrangians up to spin $5/2$, and show that they reproduce the previously-known amplitudes. For the multi-graviton amplitudes analogous to the Compton amplitude, no further corrections to our Lagrangians are expected, and hence such amplitudes are uniquely predicted. As an essential tool, we introduce a modified version of the massive spinor-helicity formalism which allows us to conveniently obtain higher-spin states, propagators and compact expressions for the amplitudes.
We embed general solutions to 4D Einstein-Maxwell theory into $mathcal{N} geq 2$ supergravity and study quadratic fluctuations of the supergravity fields around the background. We compute one-loop quantum corrections for all fields and show that the $c$-anomaly vanishes for complete $mathcal{N}=2$ multiplets. Logarithmic corrections to the entropy of Kerr-Newman black holes are therefore universal and independent of black hole parameters.
The strongly coupled dynamics of black hole formation in bulk AdS is conjectured to be dual to the thermalization of a weakly interacting CFT on the boundary for low $N$ which, for $Ntoinfty$, becomes strongly coupled. We search for this thermalization effect by utilizing the D1D5 CFT to compute effective string interactions for $N=2$. This is done by turning on a marginal deformation of the theory which twists together or untwists effective strings. For a system to thermalize, the initial state, which is far from thermal, must redistribute its energy via interactions until a thermal state is achieved. In our case, we consider excited states of the effective strings. We compute splitting amplitudes for 1) one excitation going to three excitations and 2) two excitations going to four excitations using two insertions of the deformation. Scenario 1) corresponds to a single particle moving in AdS. Scenario 2) corresponds to two particles moving and colliding in AdS. We find that the `1 to 3 amplitude has terms which oscillate with time, $t$, where $t$ is the duration of the two deformations. We find that the `2 to 4 amplitude has similar oscillatory terms as well as secular terms which grow like $t^2$. For this case the growth implies that for large $t$ the excitations in the initial state, which carry a given energy, prefer to redistribute themselves amongst lower energy modes in the final state. This is a key feature of thermalization. Albeit in a simplified setting, we therefore argue that we have identified the thermalization vertex in the D1D5 CFT, which after repeated applications, should lead to thermalization. This ultimately maps to two particles colliding and forming a black hole in AdS, which in our case, is a fuzzball.
We show that for an eikonal limit of gravity in a space-time of any dimension with a non-vanishing cosmological constant, the Einstein -- Hilbert action reduces to a boundary action. This boundary action describes the interaction of shock-waves up to the point of evolution at which the forward light-cone of a collision meets the boundary of the space-time. The conclusions are quite general and in particular generalize the previous work of E. and H. Verlinde. The role of the off-diagonal Einstein action in removing the bulk part of the action is emphasised. We discuss the sense in which our result is a particular example of holography and also the relation of our solutions in $AdS$ to those of Horowitz and Itzhaki.
In this paper we aim to investigate the process of massless scalar wave scattering due to a self-dual black hole through the partial wave method. We calculate the phase shift analytically at the low energy limit and we show that the dominant term of the differential cross section at the small angle limit is modified by the presence of parameters related to the polymeric function and minimum area of a self-dual black hole. We also find that the result for the absorption cross section is given by the event horizon area of the self-dual black hole at the low frequency limit. We also show that, contrarily to the case of a Schwarzschild black hole, the differential scattering/absorption cross section of a self-dual black hole is nonzero at the zero mass limit. In addition, we verify these results by numerically solving the radial equation for arbitrary frequencies.