(The) high energy behavior of string theory

Abstract

The high energy behavior of string scattering amplitudes is studied to all orders in perturbation theory, with the aim of exploring the short distance structure of string theory. It is shown that the sum over all Riemann surfaces is dominated by a saddle point. Consequently, the high energy limit is universal and simple to calculate. Furthermore in this limit, the amplitudes fall off in a stringy way-much faster than that allowed by the field theory. The dominant saddle points are identified as coming from world sheets which are Z symmetric algebraic curves, and there contribution to the scattering amplitude is evaluated. An interesting space time picture of high energy limit emergies.