High energy scattering in Einstein–Cartan gravity

Abstract

Abstract We consider Riemann–Cartan gravity with minimal Palatini action, which is classically equivalent to Einstein gravity. Following the ideas of Lipatov (Nucl Phys B 365:614–632, 1991, Phys Part Nucl 44:391–413, 2013, Subnucl Ser 49:131, 2013, Subnucl Ser 50:213–225, 2014, Int J Mod Phys A 31(28/29):1645011, 2016, EPJ Web Conf 125:01010, 2016) and Bartels et al. (JHEP 07:056, 2014) we propose the effective action for this theory aimed at the description of the high-energy scattering of gravitating particles in the multi-Regge kinematics. We add to the Palatini action the new terms. These terms are responsible for the interaction of gravitational quanta with gravitational reggeons. The latter replace exchange by multiple gravitational excitations. We propose the heuristic explanation of its particular form based on an analogy to the reggeon field theory of QCD. We argue that Regge kinematics assumes the appearance of an effective two-dimensional model describing the high-energy scattering similar to that of QCD. Such a model may be formulated in a way leading to our final effective theory. It contains interaction between the ordinary quanta of spin connection and vielbein with the gravitational reggeons.