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

Abstract

A bstract 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.

Topics & Concepts