Celestial amplitudes from UV to IR

Journal Article · 12 August 2021 · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep08(2021)062 · OSTI ID:1839611

Arkani-Hamed, N. ^[1]; Pate, M. ^[2]; Raclariu, A. -M. ^[3]; Strominger, A. ^[2]

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1. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ (United States); Institute for Advanced Study
2. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (United States)
3. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON (Canada)

Celestial amplitudes represent 4D scattering of particles in boost, rather than the usual energy-momentum, eigenstates and hence are sensitive to both UV and IR physics. We show that known UV and IR properties of quantum gravity translate into powerful constraints on the analytic structure of celestial amplitudes. For example the soft UV behavior of quantum gravity is shown to imply that the exact four-particle scattering amplitude is meromorphic in the complex boost weight plane with poles confined to even integers on the negative real axis. Would-be poles on the positive real axis from UV asymptotics are shown to be erased by a flat space analog of the AdS resolution of the bulk point singularity. The residues of the poles on the negative axis are identified with operator coefficients in the IR effective action. Far along the real positive axis, the scattering is argued to grow exponentially according to the black hole area law. Exclusive amplitudes are shown to simply factorize into conformally hard and conformally soft factors. The soft factor contains all IR divergences and is given by a celestial current algebra correlator of Goldstone bosons from spontaneously broken asymptotic symmetries. The hard factor describes the scattering of hard particles together with the boost-eigenstate clouds of soft photons or gravitons required by asymptotic symmetries. These provide an IR safe S-matrix for the scattering of hard particles.

• Research Organization: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0009988
• OSTI ID: 1839611
• Journal Information: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online) Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 2021; ISSN 1029-8479
• Publisher: Springer NatureCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English