Asymptotic High Energy Total Cross Sections and Theories with Extra Dimensions

TL;DR

This paper explores how the growth of high energy cross sections could indicate extra spatial dimensions, reviewing theoretical bounds, experimental data, and implications for detecting extra dimensions in high energy physics.

Contribution

It provides a model-independent analysis of how extra dimensions influence cross section growth and assesses current experimental limits on their existence.

Findings

Cross section growth rates are sensitive to extra dimensions.

Current data up to 100 TeV do not support large extra dimensions.

Signatures of extra dimensions at LHC may be due to other new physics.

Abstract

The rate at which cross sections grow with energy is sensitive to the presence of extra dimensions in a rather model-independent fashion. We examine how rates would be expected to grow if there are more spatial dimensions than 3 which appear at some energy scale, making connections with black hole physics and string theory. We also review what is known about the corresponding generalization of the Froissart-Martin bound and the experimental status of high energy hadronic cross sections which appear to saturate it up to the experimentally accessible limit of 100 TeV. We discuss how extra dimensions can be searched for in high energy cross section data and find no room for large extra dimensions in present data. Any apparent signatures of extra dimensions at the LHC may have to be interpreted as due to some other form of new physics.