Analytical On-shell Calculation of Low Energy Higher Order Scattering

Abstract

We demonstrate that the use of analytical on-shell methods involving calculation of the discontinuity across the t-channel cut associated with the exchange of a pair of massless particles (photons or gravitons) can be used to evaluate one-loop contributions to electromagnetic and gravitational scattering, with and without polarizability, reproducing via simple algebraic manipulations, results obtained previously, generally using Feynman diagram techniques. In the gravitational case the use of factorization permits a straightforward and algebraic calculation of higher order scattering without consideration of ghost contributions or of triple-graviton couplings, which made previous evaluations considerably more arduous.