Speaker
Description
TItle: High-precision black hole scattering from worldline quantum field theory
Abstract: Predicting the outcome of scattering processes of elementary particles in colliders is the central achievement of relativistic quantum field theory applied to the fundamental (non-gravitational) interactions of nature. While the gravitational interactions are too minuscule to be observed in the microcosm, they dominate the interactions at large scales. As such the inspiral and merger of black holes and neutron stars in our universe are now routinely observed by gravitational wave detectors. The need for high precision theory predictions of the emitted gravitational waveforms has opened a new window for the application of perturbative quantum field theory techniques to the domain of gravity. Here we report on a new highest-precision analytical result for the scattering angle, radiated energy, and recoil of such a black hole or neutron star scattering encounter at the fifth order in Newton’s gravitational coupling G, assuming a hierarchy in the two masses. This is achieved by synergistically porting state-of-the-art techniques for the scattering of elementary particles in colliders to this classical physics problem in our universe. Our results show that in the radiated energy a new class of mathematical functions related to Calabi-Yau manifolds appear for the first time in nature, which so far have been studied in mathematics and compactifications within string theory.
