Journal of High Energy Physics (Dec 2020)

Fixing the non-relativistic expansion of the 1PM potential

  • Gianluca Grignani,
  • Troels Harmark,
  • Marta Orselli,
  • Andrea Placidi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2020)142
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2020, no. 12
pp. 1 – 18

Abstract

Read online

Abstract We obtain a first order post-Minkowskian two-body effective potential whose post-Newtonian expansion directly reproduces the Einstein-Infeld-Hoffmann potential. Post-Minkowskian potentials can be extracted from on-shell scattering amplitudes in a quantum field theory of scalar matter coupled to gravity. Previously, such potentials did not reproduce the Einstein-Infeld-Hoffmann potential without employing a suitable canonical transformation. In this work, we resolve this issue by obtaining a new expression for the first-order post-Minkowskian potential. This is accomplished by exploiting the reference frame dependence that arises in the scattering amplitude computation. Finally, as a check on our result, we demonstrate that our new potential gives the correct scattering angle.

Keywords