On the factorization of universal poles in a theory of gravitating point particles.

Abstract

A theory is considered in which point-like particles scatter only gravitationally and electromagnetically but no other exchanges are taken into account. The two-particle amplitude at high s, low t, as computed before, has universal poles at s values whose imaginary parts are integer positive numbers times the Planck mass squared. In this paper, the three-particle amplitude at high s, low t, is computed, and found to yield half-integer values. All these calculations only use general relativity and quantum mechanics as an input. Some speculations upon the relevance of these poles for the quantization problem of gravitation are given in the end.