Odderon in gauge/string duality

Abstract

At high energies, elastic hadronic cross sections, such as pp, p, π±p, are dominated by vacuum exchange, which in leading order of the 1/Nc expansion has been identified as the BFKL Pomeron or its strong AdS dual the closed string Reggeized graviton [1]. However the difference of particle anti-particle cross sections are given by a so-called Odderon, carrying C = -1 vacuum quantum numbers identified in weak coupling with odd numbers of exchanged gluons. Here we show that in the dual description the Odderon is the Reggeized Kalb-Ramond field (Bμν) in the Neveu-Schwartz sector of closed string theory. To first order in strong coupling, the high energy contribution of the Odderon is evaluated for = 4 Super Yang-Mills by a generalization of the gravity dual analysis for the Pomeron in ref. [1]. The consequences of confinement on the Odderon are estimated in the confining QCD-like AdS5 hardwall model of Polchinski and Strassler [2].