A Note on High-Energy Scattering of Open Superstrings

Abstract: We study the Regge and hard scattering limits of the one-loop amplitude for massless open string states in the type I theory. For hard scattering we find the exact coefficient multiplying the known exponential falloff in terms of the scattering angle, without relying on a saddle point approximation for the integration over the cross ratio. This bypasses the issues of estimating the contributions from flat directions, as well as those that arise from fluctuations of the gaussian integration about a saddle point. This result allows for a straightforward computation of the small- angle behavior of the hard scattering regime and we find complete agreement with the Regge limit at high momentum transfer, as expected.