Massless limit and conformal soft limit for celestial massive amplitudes

Abstract

In celestial holography, the massive and massless scalars in 4d space-time are represented by the Fourier transform of the bulk-to-boundary propagators and the Mellin transform of plane waves respectively. Recently, the 3pt celestial amplitude of one massive scalar and two massless scalars was discussed in arXiv:2312.08597. In this paper, we compute the 3pt celestial amplitude of two massive scalars and one massless scalar. Then we take the massless limit $m\to 0$ for one of the massive scalars, during which process the gamma function $\Gamma(1-\Delta)$ appears. By requiring the resulting amplitude to be well-defined, that is it goes to the 3pt amplitude of arXiv:2312.08597, the scaling dimension of this massive scalar has to be conformally soft $\Delta \to 1$. The pole $1/(1-\Delta)$ coming from $\Gamma(1-\Delta)$ is crucial for this massless limit. Without it the resulting amplitude would be zero. This can be compared with the conformal soft limit in celestial gluon amplitudes, where a singularity $1/(\Delta -1)$ arises and the leading contribution comes from the soft energy $\omega\to 0$. The phase factors in the massless limit of massive conformal primary wave functions, dicussed in arXiv:1705.01027, plays an import and consistent role in the celestial massive amplitudes. Furthermore, the subleading orders $m^{2n}$ can also contribute poles when the scaling dimension is analytically continued to $\Delta=1-n$ or $\Delta = 2$, and we find that this consistent massless limit only exists for dimensions belonging to the generalized conformal primary operators $\Delta \in 2-\mathbb{Z}_{\geqslant 0}$ of massless bosons.