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arXiv · 2406.07943

Supertranslation ambiguity in post-Minkowskian expansion

Pujian Mao·Baijun Zeng
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Abstract

The supertranslation ambiguity of angular momentum is a long-standing problem in general relativity, which arises the puzzle of the angular momentum loss in the post-Minkowskian (PM) expansion. The angular momentum loss in gravitational scattering is of order $G^2$ in the linear response theory but of order $G^3$ in the amplitudes-based methods. In this paper, we propose a generic prescription to fix the supertranslation ambiguity in the PM expansion which will uniquely determine the angular momentum loss. The proposal is self-contained and involves only the null infinity data.

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Pujian Mao, Baijun Zeng. 2024-06-12. Supertranslation ambiguity in post-Minkowskian expansion. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.111.l021502

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