English

Logarithmic soft theorems and soft spectra

High Energy Physics - Theory 2024-12-31 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Using universal predictions provided by classical soft theorems, we revisit the energy emission spectrum for gravitational scatterings of compact objects in the low-frequency expansion. We calculate this observable beyond the zero-frequency limit, retaining an exact dependence on the kinematics of the massive objects. This allows us to study independently the ultrarelativistic or massless limit, where we find agreement with the literature, and the small-deflection or post-Minkowskian (PM) limit, where we provide explicit results up to O(G5)\mathcal{O}(G^5). These confirm that the high-velocity limit of a given PM order is smoothly connected to the corresponding massless result whenever the latter is analytic in the Newton constant GG. We also provide explicit expressions for the waveforms to order ω1\omega^{-1}, logω\log\omega, ω(logω)2\omega(\log\omega)^2 in the soft limit, ω0\omega\to0, expanded up to sub-subleading PM order, as well as a conjecture for the logarithmic soft terms of the type ωn1(logω)n\omega^{n-1}(\log\omega)^{n} with n3n\ge 3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.04128,
  title  = {Logarithmic soft theorems and soft spectra},
  author = {Francesco Alessio and Paolo Di Vecchia and Carlo Heissenberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.04128},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

42 pages + references. V2: Presentation expanded and improved. We include several new results based on the resummed waveform that captures all leading logarithms for a background $2\to2$ hard process. V3: Matches the published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:29:34.056Z