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arXiv · 2603.20261

Gravitational scattering amplitudes from curved space

Carl Jordan Eriksen
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Abstract

Motivated by the study of extreme mass-ratio binary systems, recent work has explored the use of curved backgrounds in computations of classical gravitational amplitudes [arXiv:2308.15304, arXiv:2308.14832, arXiv:2406.14770]. While these investigations concern the self-force expansion in the ratio of masses of the binaries, the use of curved backgrounds is interesting in its own right. In this thesis, I examine how gravitational computations can be done in a curved background. After having reviewed aspects of general relativity and the $d$-dimensional metric generated by a point mass (known as the Schwarzschild-Tangherlini solution), I quantize general relativity on an arbitrary background and compute Feynman rules for gravity in two cases: when the background is flat, and when it is a Schwarzschild-Tangherlini background. I then outline worldline quantum field theory. Using this newly-developed perturbation theory for the partition function of a worldline coupled to gravity in a curved background, I reformulate the perturbative expansion of the Compton amplitude, which describes the scattering of a graviton off a compact object. Having established this framework, I compute the first and second post-Minkowskian contributions to the Compton amplitude. Both are shown to match the results obtained from a flat-space computation. In addition, the second-order amplitude displays the expected infrared behavior and agrees with earlier results on massless gravitational scattering.

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Carl Jordan Eriksen. 2026-03-12. Gravitational scattering amplitudes from curved space. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20261

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