May 5, 2022
Making use of the recently-derived, all-spin, opposite-helicity Compton amplitude, we calculate the classical gravitational scattering amplitude for one spinning and one spinless object at $\mathcal{O}(G^{2})$ and all orders in spin. By construction, this amplitude exhibits the spin structure that has been conjectured to describe Kerr black holes. This spin structure alone is not enough to fix all deformations of the Compton amplitude by contact terms, but when combined with considerations of the ultrarelativistic limit we can uniquely assign values to the parameters remaining in the even-in-spin sector. Once these parameters are determined, much of the spin dependence of the amplitude resums into hypergeometric functions. Finally, we derive the eikonal phase for aligned-spin scattering.
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April 26, 2023
We calculate the scattering of two rotating objects with the linear-in-curvature spin-induced multipoles of Kerr black holes at $\mathcal{O}(G^2)$ and all orders in the spins of both objects. This is done including the complete set of contact terms potentially relevant to Kerr-black-hole scattering at $\mathcal{O}(G^2)$. As such, Kerr black holes should be described by this scattering amplitude for a specific choice of values for the contact-term coefficients. The inclusion o...
March 11, 2022
The classical scattering of spinning objects is well described by the spinor-helicity formalism for heavy particles. Using these variables, we derive spurious-pole-free, all-spin opposite-helicity Compton amplitudes (factorizing on physical poles to the minimal, all-spin three-point amplitudes of ref. \cite{Arkani-Hamed:2017jhn}) in the classical limit for QED, QCD, and gravity. The cured amplitudes are subject to deformations by contact terms, the vast majority of whose cont...
December 15, 2022
We continue to investigate correspondences between, on the one hand, scattering amplitudes for massive higher-spin particles and gravitons in appropriate quantum-to-classical limits, and on the other hand, classical gravitational interactions of spinning black holes according to general relativity. We first construct an ansatz for a gravitational Compton amplitude, at tree level, constrained only by locality, crossing symmetry, unitarity and consistency with the linearized-Ke...
September 20, 2023
We develop a novel amplitude bootstrap technique manifestly free of unphysical poles for classically spinning particles interacting with gravitons utilizing only the gauge/gravity double-copy and physical factorization limits. Combined with non-factorization polynomial contact contributions from physical data for Kerr black holes, we can address high-spin-order covariant gravitational Compton amplitudes, identifying a pattern for the amplitude that we believe could extend to ...
October 6, 2023
We compute the classical tree-level five-point amplitude for the two-to-two scattering of spinning celestial objects with the emission of a graviton. Using this five-point amplitude, we then turn to the computation of the leading-order time-domain gravitational waveform. The method we describe is suitable for arbitrary values of classical spin of Kerr black holes and does not require any expansion in powers of the spin. In this paper we illustrate it in the simpler case of th...
June 13, 2024
We consider the covariant proposal for the gravitational Compton amplitude for a Kerr black hole. Employing the covariant three- and four-point Compton amplitudes, we assemble the classical one-loop integrand on the maximal cut at all orders in spin, utilizing the method of unitarity. Expanding in powers of spin, we evaluate the one-loop amplitude up to $\mathcal O(G^2 a^8)$. Supplemented with extra contact contributions derived from the far-zone data of the Teukolsky solutio...
December 17, 2018
We provide evidence that the classical scattering of two spinning black holes is controlled by the soft expansion of exchanged gravitons. We show how an exponentiation of Cachazo-Strominger soft factors, acting on massive higher-spin amplitudes, can be used to find spin contributions to the aligned-spin scattering angle, conjecturally extending previously known results to higher orders in spin at one-loop order. The extraction of the classical limit is accomplished via the on...
June 19, 2024
We study the $2 \to 2$ scattering in the regime where the wavelength of the scattered objects is comparable to their distance but is much larger than any Compton wavelength in the quantum field theory. We observe that in this regime - which differs from the eikonal - the Feynman diagram expansion takes the form of a geometric series, akin to the Born series of quantum mechanics. Conversely, we can define the Feynman diagram expansion as the Born series of a relativistic effec...
July 30, 2021
Quantum scattering amplitudes for massive matter have received new attention in connection to classical calculations relevant to gravitational-wave physics. Amplitude methods and insights are now employed for precision computations of observables needed for describing the gravitational dynamics of bound massive objects such as black holes. An important direction is the inclusion of spin effects needed to accurately describe rotating (Kerr) black holes. Higher-spin amplitudes ...
September 16, 2019
It has been suggested that amplitudes for quantum higher-spin massive particles exchanging gravitons lead, via a classical limit, to results for scattering of spinning black holes in general relativity, when the massive particles are in a certain way minimally coupled to gravity. Such limits of such amplitudes suggest, at least at lower orders in spin, up to second order in the gravitational constant $G$, that the classical aligned-spin scattering function for an arbitrary-ma...