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arXiv · 2308.14832

Effective Field Theory for Extreme Mass Ratios

Clifford Cheung·Julio Parra-Martinez·Ira Z. Rothstein·Nabha Shah·Jordan Wilson-Gerow
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Abstract

We derive an effective field theory describing a pair of gravitationally interacting point particles in an expansion in their mass ratio, also known as the self-force (SF) expansion. The 0SF dynamics are trivially obtained to all orders in Newton's constant by the geodesic motion of the light body in a Schwarzschild background encoding the gravitational field of the heavy body. The corrections at 1SF and higher are generated by perturbations about this configuration -- that is, the geodesic deviation of the light body and the fluctuation graviton -- but crucially supplemented by an operator describing the recoil of the heavy body as it interacts with the smaller companion. Using this formalism we compute new results at third post-Minkowskian order for the conservative dynamics of a system of gravitationally interacting massive particles coupled to a set of additional scalar and vector fields.

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Clifford Cheung, Julio Parra-Martinez, Ira Z. Rothstein, Nabha Shah, Jordan Wilson-Gerow. 2023-08-28. Effective Field Theory for Extreme Mass Ratios. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.132.091402

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