String loops and gravitational positivity bounds: imprint of light particles at high energies

A bstract We study loop corrections to positivity bounds on effective field theories in the context of 2 → 2 scattering in gravitational theories, in the presence of light particles. It has been observed that certain negative contributions at low energies are enhanced by inverse powers of a small mass m and are nontrivial to cancel against other low-energy contributions. These originate from near the forward limit of diagrams involving graviton exchange. We observe that scattering in this kinematics domain remains infrared-sensitive even at high center-of-mass energy. By considering a string-inspired model in which high-energy loops can be calculated using unitarity and Regge behavior of tree amplitudes, we uncover a natural mechanism through which 1 /m -enhanced terms perfectly cancel between low and high energy contributions. This concretely explains possible positivity violations in the presence of gravity from the high-energy viewpoint.