Observing Massive Scattering from Null Infinity

Abstract

Because massive particles asymptote to timelike rather than null infinity, current flat space holographic proposals such as celestial or Carrollian holography struggle to describe scattering processes with massive external states. We take a step toward addressing this limitation by studying how information about massive scattering amplitudes is carried to the late-time limit of null infinity by soft graviton radiation. We show that continuity between the boundaries of timelike and null infinity implies that the late-time limit of the Bondi mass aspect naturally acts as a detector operator for massive outgoing radiation. We further relate in-in correlation functions of the Bondi mass aspect at $\mathscr{I}^+_+$ to weighted sums of scattering cross sections, implying that an observer at $\mathscr{I}$ can extract information about massive scattering processes at late times. Finally, we interpret the Bondi mass aspect as a Carrollian stress-tensor component, and study Ward identities to constrain its two-point functions.