Radiative contribution to classical gravitational scattering at the third order in $G$

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that gravitational wave emission during high-impact-parameter scattering of point masses introduces a third-order correction to the classical scattering angle, resolving divergences and aligning with quantum eikonal results.

Contribution

It proves that radiation-reaction effects modify the third-order scattering angle in the post-Minkowskian framework, addressing high-energy divergences and connecting classical and quantum results.

Findings

Radiation-reaction adds a third-order correction to the scattering angle.

High-energy divergence cancels out, yielding a finite limit.

Classical results agree with quantum eikonal phase calculations.

Abstract

Working within the post-Minkowskian approach to General Relativity, we prove that the radiation-reaction to the emission of gravitational waves during the large-impact-parameter scattering of two (classical) point masses modifies the conservative scattering angle by an additional contribution of order $G^3$ which involves a high-energy (or massless) logarithmic divergence of opposite sign to the one contained in the third-post-Minkowskian result of Bern et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 122}, 201603 (2019)]. The high-energy limit of the resulting radiation-reaction-corrected (classical) scattering angle is finite, and is found to agree with the one following from the (quantum) eikonal-phase result of Amati, Ciafaloni and Veneziano [ Nucl. Phys. B {\bf 347}, 550 (1990)].