SUPERSTRING ELASTIC-SCATTERING AT SQUARE-ROOT-S GREATER-THAN-OR-EQUAL-TO 10(19) GEV - THE COVARIANT LOOP CALCULUS APPROACH

We study quantum gravity by considering the elastic scattering of two on-shell string ground states in the large-s, fixed-t asymptotic limit. The amplitude is computed by means of the covariant loop calculus which turns out to be a powerful method in the study of such a Regge regime. The leading contribution in powers of s is shown to factorize at any g-loop order in a product of g + 1 tree amplitudes times the expectation value of a factorized operator. The cumulative effect of these contributions - once it has been resummed - restores unitarity in the theory and gives a deflection angle in agreement with the linear approximation to general relativity. In the process, it is possible to determine the normalization dictated by unitarity of all terms in the topological expansion. Next, the first sub-leading contribution is calculated at the two-loop order, the so-called H-diagram. A resummation of such terms gives rise to the first non-linear correction in the deflection angle. Our results are in agreement with previous work by Amati, Ciafaloni and Veneziano in the framework of Regge-Gribov techniques. The correspondence between the two approaches is discussed.