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We consider the scattering of lightlike matter in the presence of a heavy scalar object (such as the Sun or a Schwarzschild black hole). By treating general relativity as an effective field theory we directly compute the nonanalytic components of the one-loop gravitational amplitude for the scattering of massless scalars or photons from an external massive scalar field. These results allow a semiclassical computation of the bending angle for light rays grazing the Sun, including long-range h contributions. We discuss implications of this computation, in particular, the violation of some classical formulations of the equivalence principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weoutline the program to apply modern quantum field theory methods to calculate observables in classical general relativity through a truncation to classical terms of the multigraviton, two-body, on-shell scattering amplitudes between massive fields. Since only long-distance interactions corresponding to nonanalytic pieces need to be included, unitarity cuts provide substantial simplifications for both post-Newtonian and post-Minkowskian expansions. We illustrate this quantum field theoretic approach to classical general relativity by computing the interaction potentials to second order in the post-Newtonian expansion, as well as the scattering functions for two massive objects to second order in the post-Minkowskian expansion. We also derive an all-order exact result for gravitational light-by-light scattering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new framework to represent the perturbative S matrix which is well defined for all quantum field theories of massless particles, constructed from tree-level amplitudes and integrable term by term. This representation is derived from the Feynman expansion through a series of partial fraction identities, discarding terms that vanish upon integration. Loop integrands are expressed in terms of "Q-cuts" that involve both off-shell and on-shell loop momenta, defined with a precise contour prescription that can be evaluated by ordinary methods. This framework implies recent results found in the scattering equation formalism at one loop, and it has a natural extension to all orders--even nonplanar theories without well-defined forward limits or good ultraviolet behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identities based on monodromy for integrations in string theory are used to derive relations between different color-ordered tree-level amplitudes in both bosonic and supersymmetric string theory. These relations imply that the color-ordered tree-level n-point gauge theory amplitudes can be expanded in a minimal basis of (n-3)! amplitudes. This result holds for any choice of polarizations of the external states and in any number of dimensions.