arXiv subjects

Gabriele Veneziano

Publications and source records attributed to Gabriele Veneziano.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Soft gravitational radiation from ultra-relativistic collisions at sub- and sub-sub-leading order

Using soft-graviton theorems a well-known zero-frequency limit (ZFL) for the gravitational radiation flux $dE^{GW}/d ω$ is re-derived and extended to order ${\cal O}(ω)$ and ${\cal O}(ω^2)$ for arbitrary massless multi-particle collisions. The (angle-integrated, unpolarized) ${\cal O}(ω)$ correction to the flux turns out to be absent in the case of two-particle elastic collisions. The ${\cal O}(ω^2)$ correction is instead non-vanishing and takes a simple general expression which is then applied to bremsstrahlung from two-particle elastic collisions. For a tree-level process the outcome is finite and consistent with expectations. Instead, if the tree-level form of the soft theorems is used at sub-sub-leading order even when the elastic amplitude needs an all-loop (eikonal) resummation, an unphysical infrared singularity occurs. Its origin can be traced to the infinite Coulomb phase of gravitational scattering in four dimensions. We briefly discuss how to get rid, in principle, of the unwanted divergences and indicate --without carrying out-- a possible procedure to find the proper correction to the naive soft theorems. Nevertheless, if a simple recipe recently proposed for handling these divergences is adopted, we find surprisingly good agreement with results obtained independently via the eikonal approach to transplanckian-energy scattering at large (small) impact parameter (deflection angle), where such Coulomb divergences explicitly cancel out.

hep-th↗

arXiv2019

Infrared features of gravitational scattering and radiation in the eikonal approach

Following a semi-classical eikonal approach --- justified at transplanckian energies order by order in the deflection angle $Θ_s\sim\frac{4G\sqrt{s}}{b} \equiv \frac{2 R}{b}$ --- we investigate the infrared features of gravitational scattering and radiation in four space-time dimensions, and we illustrate the factorization and cancellation of the infinite Coulomb phase for scattering and the eikonal resummation for radiation. As a consequence, both the eikonal phase $2δ(E,b)$ and the gravitational-wave (GW) spectrum $\frac{\mathrm{d}E^{GW}}{\mathrm{d}ω}$ are free from infrared problems in a frequency region extending from zero to (and possibly beyond) $ω=1/R$. The infrared-singular behavior of $4$-D gravity leaves a memory in the deep infrared region ($ωR \ll ωb < 1$) of the spectrum. At $\mathcal{O}(ωb)$ we confirm the presence of logarithmic enhancements of the form already pointed out by Sen and collaborators on the basis of non leading corrections to soft-graviton theorems. These, however, do not contribute to the unpolarized and/or azimuthally-averaged flux. At $\mathcal{O}(ω^2 b^2)$ we find instead a positive logarithmically-enhanced correction to the total flux implying an unexpected maximum of its spectrum at $ωb \sim 0.5$. At higher orders we find subleading enhanced contributions as well, which can be resummed, and have the interpretation of a finite rescattering Coulomb phase of emitted gravitons.

hep-th↗

arXiv2018

Observation angles, Fermi coordinates, and the Geodesic-Light-Cone gauge

We show that the angular directions locally measured by a static geodesic observer in a generic cosmological background and expressed in the system of Fermi Normal Coordinates always coincide with those expressed in the Geodesic-Light-Cone (GLC) gauge, up to a local transformation which exploits the residual gauge freedom of the GLC coordinates. This is not the case for other gauges - like, for instance, the synchronous and longitudinal gauge - commonly used in the context of observational cosmology. We also make an explicit proposal for the GLC gauge-fixing condition that ensures a full identification of its angles with the observational ones.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Stringy black-hole gas in $α'$-corrected dilaton gravity

We discuss the properties of the gas of primordial `stringy' black holes possibly formed in the high-curvature phase preceding the bouncing transition to the phase of standard cosmological evolution. We show that the regime dominated by such a string-hole gas can be consistently described by explicit solutions of the string effective action including first-order $α'$ corrections. We present a phase space analysis of the stability of such solutions comparing the results obtained from different actions and including the possibility of $O(d,d)$-symmetric configurations.

hep-th↗

arXiv2017

Spontaneous $CP$ breaking in QCD and the axion potential: an effective Lagrangian approach

Using the well-known low-energy effective Lagrangian of QCD --valid for small (non-vanishing) quark masses and a large number of colors-- we study in detail the regions of parameter space where $CP$ is spontaneously broken/unbroken for a vacuum angle $θ= π$. In the $CP$-broken region there are first order phase transitions as one crosses $θ=π$, while on the (hyper)surface separating the two regions, there are second order phase transitions signaled by the vanishing of the mass of a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson and by a divergent QCD topological susceptibility. The second order point sits at the end of a first order line associated with the $CP$ spontaneous breaking, in the appropriate complex parameter plane. When the effective Lagrangian is extended by the inclusion of an axion these features of QCD imply that standard calculations of the axion potential have to be revised when the QCD parameters fall in the above mentioned $CP$-broken region, in spite of the fact that the axion solves the strong-$CP$ problem. These latter results could be of interest for axionic dark matter calculations if the topological susceptibility of pure Yang-Mills theory falls off sufficiently fast when temperature is increased towards the QCD deconfining transition.

hep-th↗

arXiv2017

A model for pion-pion scattering in large-N QCD

Following up on recent work by Caron-Huot et al. we consider a generalization of the old Lovelace-Shapiro model as a toy model for Pi-Pi scattering satisfying (most of) the properties expected to hold in ('t Hooft's) large-N limit of massless QCD. In particular, the model has asymptotically linear and parallel Regge trajectories at positive t, a positive leading Regge intercept $α_0 < 1$, and an effective bending of the trajectories in the negative-t region producing a fixed branch point at J=0 for $t < t_0 < 0$. Fixed (physical) angle scattering can be tuned to match the power-like (including logarithmic corrections) behavior predicted by perturbative QCD: $A(s,t) ~ s^{-β} \log(s)^{-γ} F(θ)$. Tree-level unitarity (i.e. positivity of residues for all values of s and J) imposes strong constraints on the allowed region in the alpha_0-beta-gamma parameter space, which nicely includes a physically interesting region around $α_0 = 0.5$, $β= 2$ and $γ= 3$. The full consistency of the model would require an extension to multi-pion processes, a program we do not undertake in this paper.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

Glimpses of black hole formation/evaporation in highly inelastic, ultra-planckian string collisions

We revisit possible glimpses of black-hole formation by looking at ultra-planckian string-string collisions at very high final-state multiplicity. We compare, in particular, previous results using the optical theorem, the resummation of ladder diagrams at arbitrary loop order, and the AGK cutting rules, with the more recent study of $2 \rightarrow N$ scattering at $N \sim s M_P^{-2} \gg 1$. We argue that some apparent tension between the two approaches disappears once a reinterpretation of the latter's results in terms of suitably defined infrared-safe cross sections is adopted. Under that assumption, the typical final state produced in an ultra-planckian collision does indeed appear to share some properties with those expected from the evaporation of a black hole of mass $\sqrt{s}$, although no sign of thermalization is seen to emerge at this level of approximation.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

Gravitational Radiation from Massless Particle Collisions

We compute classical gravitational bremsstrahlung from the gravitational scattering of two massless particles at leading order in the (center of mass) deflection angle $θ\sim 4 G \sqrt{s}/b = 8 G E/b \ll 1$. The calculation, although non-perturbative in the gravitational constant, is surprisingly simple and yields explicit formulae --in terms of multidimensional integrals-- for the frequency and angular distribution of the radiation. In the range $ b^{-1} < ω< (GE)^{-1}$, the GW spectrum behaves like $ \log (1/GEω) d ω$, is confined to cones of angular sizes (around the deflected particle trajectories) ranging from $O(θ)$ to $O(1/ωb)$, and exactly reproduces, at its lower end, a well-known zero-frequency limit. At $ω> (GE)^{-1}$ the radiation is confined to cones of angular size of order $θ(GEω)^{-1/2}$ resulting in a scale-invariant ($dω/ω$) spectrum. The total efficiency in GW production is dominated by this "high frequency" region and is formally logarithmically divergent in the UV. If the spectrum is cutoff at the limit of validity of our approximations (where a conjectured bound on GW power is also saturated), the fraction of incoming energy radiated away turns out to be $\frac{1}{2 π} θ^2 \log θ^{-2}$ at leading logarithmic accuracy.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

The string-junction picture of multiquark states: an update

We recall and update, both theoretically and phenomenologically, our (nearly) forty-years-old proposal of a string-junction as a necessary complement to the conventional classification of hadrons based just on their quark-antiquark constituents. In that proposal single (though in general metastable) hadronic states are associated with "irreducible" gauge-invariant operators consisting of Wilson lines (visualized as strings of color flux tubes) that may either end on a quark or an antiquark, or annihilate in triplets at a junction $J$ or an anti-junction $\bar{J}$. For the junction-free sector (ordinary $q\, \bar{q}$ mesons and glueballs) the picture is supported by large-$N$ (number of colors) considerations as well as by a lattice strong-coupling expansion. Both imply the famous OZI rule suppressing quark-antiquark annihilation diagrams. For hadrons with $J$ and/or $\bar{J}$ constituents the same expansions support our proposal, including its generalization of the OZI rule to the suppression of $J-\bar{J}$ annihilation diagrams. Such a rule implies that hadrons with junctions are "mesophobic" and thus unusually narrow if they are below threshold for decaying into as many baryons as their total number of junctions (two for a tetraquark, three for a pentaquark). Experimental support for our claim, based on the observation that narrow multiquark states typically lie below (well above) the relevant baryonic (mesonic) thresholds, will be presented.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Unified limiting form of graviton radiation at extreme energies

We derive the limiting form of graviton radiation in gravitational scattering at transplanckian energies ($E\gg M_P$) and small deflection angles. We show that --- owing to the graviton's spin 2 --- such limiting form unifies the soft- and Regge- regimes of emission, by covering a broad angular range, from forward fragmentation to deeply central region. The single-exchange emission amplitudes have a nice expression in terms of the transformation phases of helicity amplitudes under rotations. As a result, the multiple-exchange emission amplitudes can be resummed via an impact parameter $b$-space factorization theorem that takes into account all coherence effects. We then see the emergence of an energy spectrum of the emitted radiation which, being tuned on $\hbar/R \sim M_P^2/E \ll M_P$, is reminiscent of Hawking's radiation. Such a spectrum is much softer than the one naïvely expected for increasing input energies and neatly solves a potential energy crisis. Furthermore, by including rescattering corrections in the (quantum) factorization formula, we are able to recover the classical limit and to find the corresponding quantum corrections. Perspectives for the extrapolation of such limiting radiation towards the classical collapse regime (where $b$ is of the order of the gravitational radius $R$) are also discussed.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Emerging Hawking-like Radiation from Gravitational Bremsstrahlung Beyond the Planck Scale

We argue that, as a consequence of the graviton's spin-2, its bremsstrahlung in trans-planckian-energy ($E\gg M_P$) gravitational scattering at small deflection angle can be nicely expressed in terms of helicity-transformation phases and their transfer within the scattering process. The resulting spectrum exhibits deeply sub-planckian characteristic energies of order $M_P^2/E \ll M_P$ (reminiscent of Hawking radiation), a suppressed fragmentation region, and a reduced rapidity plateau, in broad agreement with recent classical estimates.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

A microscopic description of absorption in high-energy string-brane collisions

We study the collision of a highly energetic light closed string off a stack of Dp-branes at (sub)string-scale impact parameters and in a regime justifying a perturbative treatment. Unlike at larger impact parameters - where elastic scattering and/or tidal excitations dominate - here absorption of the closed string by the brane system, with the associated excitation of open strings living on it, becomes important. As a first step, we study this phenomenon at the disk level, in which the energetic closed string turns into a single heavy open string at rest whose particularly simple properties are described.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Regge behavior saves String Theory from causality violations

Higher-derivative corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action are present in bosonic string theory leading to the potential causality violations recently pointed out by Camanho et al. We analyze in detail this question by considering high-energy string-brane collisions at impact parameters $b \le l_s$ (the string-length parameter) with $l_s \gg R_p$ (the characteristic scale of the D$p$-brane geometry). If we keep only the contribution of the massless states causality is violated for a set of initial states whose polarization is suitably chosen with respect to the impact parameter vector. Such violations are instead neatly avoided when the full structure of string theory - and in particular its Regge behavior - is taken into account.

hep-th↗

arXiv2014

The Quark Condensate in Multi-Flavour QCD - Planar Equivalence Confronting Lattice Simulations

Planar equivalence between the large $N$ limits of ${\cal N}=1$ Super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory and a variant of QCD with fermions in the antisymmetric representation is a powerful tool to obtain analytic non-perturbative results in QCD itself. In particular, it allows the quark condensate for $N=3$ QCD with quarks in the fundamental representation to be inferred from exact calculations of the gluino condensate in ${\cal N}=1$ SYM. In this paper, we review and refine our earlier predictions for the quark condensate in QCD with a general number $n_f$ of flavours and confront these with lattice results.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

Microscopic unitary description of tidal excitations in high-energy string-brane collisions

The eikonal operator was originally introduced to describe the effect of tidal excitations on higher-genus elastic string amplitudes at high energy. In this paper we provide a precise interpretation for this operator through the explicit tree-level calculation of generic inelastic transitions between closed strings as they scatter off a stack of parallel Dp-branes. We perform this analysis both in the light-cone gauge, using the Green-Schwarz vertex, and in the covariant formalism, using the Reggeon vertex operator. We also present a detailed discussion of the high energy behaviour of the covariant string amplitudes, showing how to take into account the energy factors that enhance the contribution of the longitudinally polarized massive states in a simple way.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

The leading eikonal operator in string-brane scattering at high energy

In this paper we present two (a priori independent) derivations of the eikonal operator in string-brane scattering. The first one is obtained by summing surfaces with any number of boundaries, while in the second one the eikonal operator is derived from the three-string vertex in a suitable light-cone gauge. This second derivation shows that the bosonic oscillators present in the leading eikonal operator are to be identified with the string bosonic oscillators in a suitable light-cone gauge, while the first one shows that it exponentiates recovering unitarity. This paper is a review of results obtained in two previous publications of the same authors.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

Quantum hair and the string-black hole correspondence

We consider a thought experiment in which an energetic massless string probes a "stringhole" (a heavy string lying on the correspondence curve between strings and black holes) at large enough impact parameter for the regime to be under theoretical control. The corresponding, explicitly unitary, $S$-matrix turns out to be perturbatively sensitive to the microstate of the stringhole: in particular, at leading order in $l_s/b$, it depends on a projection of the stringhole's Lorentz-contracted quadrupole moment. The string-black hole correspondence is therefore violated if one assumes quantum hair to be exponentially suppressed as a function of black-hole entropy. Implications for the information paradox are briefly discussed.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Do stochastic inhomogeneities affect dark-energy precision measurements?

The effect of a stochastic background of cosmological perturbations on the luminosity-redshift relation is computed to second order through a recently proposed covariant and gauge-invariant light-cone averaging procedure. The resulting expressions are free from both ultraviolet and infrared divergences, implying that such perturbations cannot mimic a sizable fraction of dark energy. Different averages are estimated and depend on the particular function of the luminosity distance being averaged. The energy flux, being minimally affected by perturbations at large z, is proposed as the best choice for precision estimates of dark-energy parameters. Nonetheless, its irreducible (stochastic) variance induces statistical errors on Ω_Λ(z) typically lying in the few-percent range.

astro-ph.CO↗