Abstract
We compute the total radiated momentum carried by gravitational waves during the scattering of two spinless black holes at the lowest order in Newton’s constant, , and all orders in velocity. By analytic continuation into the bound state regime, we obtain the energy loss in elliptic orbits. This provides an essential step toward the complete understanding of the third-post-Minkowskian binary dynamics. We employ the formalism of Kosower, Maybee, and O’Connell (KMOC), which relates classical observables to quantum scattering amplitudes, and derive the relevant integrands using generalized unitarity. The subsequent phase-space integrations are performed via the reverse unitarity method familiar from collider physics, using differential equations to obtain the exact velocity dependence from near-static boundary conditions.
- Received 4 February 2021
- Accepted 15 April 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.201602
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society