Peeling-violating coefficients in classical gravitational scattering

TL;DR

This paper derives exact expressions for peeling-violating components of the Weyl tensor in classical gravitational scattering, revealing their dependence on incoming data and connections to celestial holography, with implications for quantum gravity.

Contribution

It introduces a new matching condition at spatial infinity and links peeling violations to celestial holography and quantum gravity effects.

Findings

Exact formulas for peeling-violating Weyl tensor components.

Dependence of coefficients on incoming scattering data.

Stronger peeling violations in perturbative quantum gravity.

Abstract

Using matching properties of the gravitational field at timelike and spatial infinity, together with universal formulas for gravitational wave tails, we obtain exact expressions for the peeling-violating components of the Weyl tensor at future and past null infinity. The coefficients depend solely on incoming scattering data and reduce, in the Newtonian limit, to those found by Damour long ago. The computation is facilitated by the observation that the tail and peeling-violating coefficients organize into a "celestial diamond" introduced in the context of celestial holography. The analysis suggests a new matching condition at spatial infinity which, together with previously found matching at timelike infinity, capture both tail and peeling-violation formulas. We conclude by pointing out that stronger peeling violations occur in perturbative quantum gravity, in agreement with a recently reported amplitude-based result.