Reggeization of N=8 Supergravity and N=4 Yang--Mills Theory

TL;DR

The paper investigates Reggeization in $N=4$ Yang–Mills theory and $N=8$ supergravity, motivated by potential ultraviolet finiteness of the latter. Using an analyticity–unitarity framework and Mandelstam counting, it shows that the YM gluon Reggeizes because the relevant nonsensical helicity sector satisfies a factorization condition, with the Regge trajectory determined by a rank-1 nonsense submatrix. Via KLT relations, the YM Reggeization propagates to the gravity sector, yielding a Reggeized graviton in $N=8$ sugra with a closely related rank structure. This supports the conjecture that $N=8$ sugra is perturbatively ultraviolet finite and suggests that the Regge structure extends to other fields within these highly symmetric theories, within the leading-logarithm approximation.

Abstract

We show that the gluon of N=4 Yang--Mills theory lies on a Regge trajectory, which then implies that the graviton of N=8 supergravity also lies on a Regge trajectory. This is consistent with the conjecture that N=8 supergravity is ultraviolet finite in perturbation theory.