Exponentiation of multiparticle amplitudes in scalar theories. II. Universality of the exponent

Abstract

It has been shown recently that the amplitude of the creation of $n$ real scalar particles by one virtual boson near $n$--particle threshold exhibits exponential behavior at $n\sim 1/\lambda$. We extend this result to the processes of multiparticle production at threshold by two virtual bosons. We find that both the tree--level amplitude and leading--$n$ loop corrections have the same exponential behavior, with the common exponent for $1\to n$ and $2\to n$ processes, for various kinematics. This result strongly indicates that the exponent for multiparticle amplitudes is independent of the initial state and that there may exist a semiclassical approach to the study of multiparticle production.

Comments: 22 pages, REVTEX