The classical super-rotation infrared triangle. Classical logarithmic soft theorem as conservation law in gravity

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 04-2025
Journal Journal of High Energy Physics
Article number 138
Volume | Issue number 2025 | 4
Number of pages 46
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Institute of Physics (IoP) - Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI)
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Institute of Physics (IoP) - Institute for Theoretical Physics Amsterdam (ITFA)
Abstract

The universality of gravitational scattering at low energies and large distances encoded in soft theorems and memory effects can be understood from symmetries. In four-dimensional asymptotically flat spacetimes the infinite enhancement of translations, extending the Poincaré group to the BMS group, is the symmetry underlying Weinberg’s soft graviton theorem and the gravitational displacement memory effect. Beyond this leading infrared triangle, loop corrections alter their nature by introducing logarithms in the soft expansion and late time tails to the memory, and this persists in the classical limit. In this work we give the first complete description of an ‘infrared triangle’ where the long-range nature of gravitational interactions is accounted for. Building on earlier results [1] where we derived a novel conservation law associated to the infinite dimensional enhancement of Lorentz transformations to superrotations, we prove here its validity to all orders in the gravitational coupling and show that it implies the classical logarithmic soft graviton theorem of Saha-Sahoo-Sen [2]. We furthermore extend the formula for the displacement memory and its tail from particles to fields, thus completing the classical superrotation infrared triangle.

Document type Article
Note Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025.
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.16142 https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2025)138
Other links https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105005484696
Downloads
JHEP04(2025)138 (Final published version)
Permalink to this page
Back