Boundary description of Planckian scattering in curved spacetimes

Abstract

We show that for an eikonal limit of gravity in a space-time of any dimension with a non-vanishing cosmological constant, the Einstein - Hilbert action reduces to a boundary action. This boundary action describes the interaction of shock-waves up to the point ofevolution at which the forward light-cone of a collision meets the boundary of the space-time. The conclusions are quite general and in particular generalize work of E. and H. Verlinde. The role of the off-diagonal Einstein action in removing the bulk part of the action is emphasised. We discuss the sense in which our result is a particular example of holography and also the relation of our solutions in AdS to those of Horowitz and Itzhaki.