Higher-order tails and RG flows due to scattering of gravitational radiation from binary inspirals

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new scattering-amplitudes-based methodology to analyze higher-order non-linear gravitational effects in binary inspirals, achieving state-of-the-art calculations up to 8.5PN order and revealing novel RG flows.

Contribution

It develops a novel approach combining scattering amplitudes and effective field theory to compute high-order tail effects in gravitational radiation from binaries.

Findings

Achieved calculations up to the third subleading tail effect at 8.5PN order.

Discovered new subleading RG flow of the quadrupole coupling.

Found perfect agreement with existing PN and self-force results.

Abstract

We establish and develop a novel methodology to treat higher-order non-linear effects of gravitational radiation that is scattered from binary inspirals, which employs modern scattering-amplitudes methods on the effective picture of the binary as a composite particle. We spell out our procedure to study such effects: assembling tree amplitudes via generalized-unitarity methods and employing the closed-time-path formalism to derive the causal effective actions, which encompass the full conservative and dissipative dynamics. We push through to a new state of the art for these higher-order effects, up to the third subleading tail effect, at order G5N and the 5-loop level, which corresponds to the 8.5PN order. We formulate the consequent dissipated energy for these higher-order corrections, and carry out a renormalization analysis, where we uncover new subleading RG flow of the quadrupole coupling. For all higher-order tail effects we find perfect agreement with partial observable results in PN and self-force theories, where available.