High-energy scattering in general non-Abelian gauge theories

Abstract

We have computed high-energy amplitudes for two-body scattering processes to eighth order in perturbation theory in the general class of renormalizable non-Abelian gauge theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking. We further study these amplitudes in detail in three models with degenerate, nonzero vector-meson masses after symmetry breaking: Models I and II are based on the same gauge group SU(2), but employ different symmetry-breaking Higgs schemes; model III is based on the gauge group SU(3), but uses a similar Higgs scheme as II. It is found that the amplitudes have very similar asymptotic behavior. In particular, the existence of Regge poles and trajectories in these amplitudes is a common feature in general theories based on any gauge group, and is insensitive to the details of the symmetry-breaking mechanism. This supports the applicability of non-Abelian gauge models of strong interactions in high-energy hadron physics.