Spinning particles, axion radiation, and the classical double copy

TL;DR

This paper extends the classical double copy framework to include spinning particles, linking gauge theory solutions with gravity and string-inspired fields, and revealing constraints on their interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a perturbative method for spinning particles in the double copy, connecting gauge theory with gravity and string theory fields at linear order in spins.

Findings

Double copy applies to spinning particles with chromomagnetic interactions.

Gravity solutions include graviton, dilaton, and axion fields consistent with string gravity.

Constraints on parameters ensure consistency between gauge and gravity theories.

Abstract

We extend the perturbative double copy between radiating classical sources in gauge theory and gravity to the case of spinning particles. We construct, to linear order in spins, perturbative radiating solutions to the classical Yang-Mills equations sourced by a set of interacting color charges with chromomagnetic dipole spin couplings. Using a color-to-kinematics replacement rule proposed earlier by one of the authors, these solutions map onto radiation in a theory of interacting particles coupled to massless fields that include the graviton, a scalar (dilaton) $\phi$ and the Kalb-Ramond axion field $B_{\mu\nu}$. Consistency of the double copy imposes constraints on the parameters of the theory on both the gauge and gravity sides of the correspondence. In particular, the color charges carry a chromomagnetic interaction which, in $d=4$, corresponds to a gyromagnetic ratio equal to Dirac's value $g=2$. The color-to-kinematics map implies that on the gravity side, the bulk theory of the fields $(\phi,g_{\mu\nu},B_{\mu\nu})$ has interactions which match those of $d$-dimensional `string gravity,' as is the case both in the BCJ double copy of pure gauge theory scattering amplitudes and the KLT relations between the tree-level $S$-matrix elements of open and closed string theory.