19.03.2008 (Wednesday)

Eikonal Methods in AdS/CFT: graviton exchange and the pomeron

Triangular Seminar Miguel Costa (University of Porto)

at:
17:30 IC
room lecture theatre 2
abstract:

We derive the eikonal approximation to high energy interactions in Anti-de Sitter spacetime, resuming in terms of a generalized phase shift, ladder and cross ladder graphs associated to the exchange of a spin j field, to all orders in the coupling constant. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, the resulting amplitude determines the behavior of the dual CFT four point function for small values of cross ratios, in a Lorentzian regime. We explore the consequences of this result to the dual CFT. In the planar limit this Lorentzian amplitude is dominated by a Regge pole whose nature varies as a function of the 't Hooft coupling. At large coupling, the pole corresponds to graviton exchange in AdS, whereas at weak coupling, the pole is that of the hard perturbative BFKL pomeron. The conformal symmetry of the transverse space E2 is trivially realized on the dual holographic space H3, allowing for a unified description of both weak and strong 't Hooft coupling regimes. The analysis suggests a possible AdS eikonal resummation of multi-pomeron exchanges implementing AdS unitarity, which differs from the usual 4-dimensional eikonal exponentiation.