Effective gravitational fields in transplanckian scattering

Abstract

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 gravitational field expectation values in a high-energy scattering process, following ACV's prescriptions. In Chapter 4, we analyze our results. The main feature is that the leading contributions to the metric computed in terms of the Feynman diagrams deriving from ACV's model perfectly reproduce classical results.