arXiv subjects

Anton Ilderton

Publications and source records attributed to Anton Ilderton.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Scattering and depletion in a flying focus from conformal transformations

We show that flying focus fields can be obtained from complex conformal transformation of plane waves, and that solutions of the massless wave equation in the so-obtained fields are, correspondingly, conformal transformations of the Volkov solutions. This leads to the result that photon emission amplitudes in a totally depleting flying focus beam may be computed directly from the corresponding plane wave amplitudes by taking a simple Gaussian average over certain momentum variables. In effect, this gives a way of introducing focussing effects into strong-field QED calculations `for free'. The extension of these results to scattering amplitudes including only partial depletion is discussed and some first results presented in the anti-self-dual limit.

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arXiv2026

The ABCs of Amplitudes, Bogoliubov and Crossing

It is now common to describe classical backgrounds involving dynamical black holes with the production of gravitational radiation using the methods of scattering amplitudes. In that light, we revisit the standard formulation of quantum field theory on a background. We discuss the interpretation of Bogoliubov coefficients as generalised amplitudes, and explain how crossing, analyticity, and causality relate the relevant set of amplitudes. When the background is itself a coherent state, we map these statements onto standard results in flat-space quantum field theory.

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arXiv2026

Hawking radiation from the double copy

Gravity and gauge theory are concretely linked by the double copy. Although well-studied at the level of perturbative scattering in vacuum, far less is known about non-perturbative aspects or extensions of the double copy beyond trivial backgrounds. We show here how Hawking radiation in a collapse metric, its associated thermal spectrum, and horizon-dependence, emerges from the double copy of particle production in a background gauge field, where there is no global horizon, nor a thermal spectrum. Our approach combines worldline and amplitudes methods, and allows the unification of several classical and quantum double copy prescriptions for black hole spacetimes.

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arXiv2026

Observation of quantum effects on radiation reaction in strong fields

Radiation reaction, the force experienced by an accelerated charge due to radiation emission, has long been the subject of extensive theoretical and experimental research. Experimental verification of a quantum, strong-field description of radiation reaction is fundamentally important, and has wide-ranging implications for astrophysics, laser-driven particle acceleration, next-generation particle colliders and inverse-Compton photon sources for medical and industrial applications. However, the difficulty of accessing regimes where strong field and quantum effects dominate inhibited previous efforts to observe quantum radiation reaction in charged particle dynamics with high significance. We report the first high significance (> 5σ) observation of strong-field radiation reaction on electron spectra where quantum effects are substantial. We obtain the first, quantitative, strong evidence favouring the quantum-continuous and quantum-stochastic models over the classical model; the quantum models perform comparably. The lower electron energy losses predicted by the quantum models accounts for their improved performance. Model comparison was performed using a novel Bayesian framework which has widespread utility for laser-particle collision experiments, including those utilising conventional accelerators, where some collision parameters cannot be measured directly.

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arXiv2025

Hamiltonian truncation and quantum simulation of strong-field QED beyond tree level

Quantum electrodynamics in strong background fields provides an interesting class of problems for classical and quantum simulation. In this paper we formulate simulations of polarization (helicity) flip for a photon colliding with a high-intensity plane wave. Polarization flip is a one loop effect, which requires addressing new issues that do not arise in simulations of tree-level processes. Working in the momentum-space Fock basis, while convenient for the extraction of scattering amplitudes, requires tuning counterterms to cancel large cutoff effects. We compute analytic formulas for the counterterms at one loop. We then construct circuits for quantum simulations of the process, perform noiseless simulations on classical computers to assess discretization errors, and discuss resource estimates for future simulations on quantum hardware.

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arXiv2025

Coherent states, background fields, and double copy

We show that scattering amplitudes on any gauge theory background admitting a coherent state description double copy to amplitudes in a curved spacetime. The metric of the spacetime is built from the gauge background using a notion of classical double copy which emerges naturally at the amplitude level. In the self-dual sector this map relates backgrounds which are exact vacuum solutions in gauge theory and gravity.

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arXiv2025

Tunnelling amplitudes and Hawking radiation from worldline QFT

We compare Hawking radiation in a collapse background with Schwinger pair creation in an electric field. The comparison is driven by the presence of an analogue horizon in the Schwinger case, which causally divides spacetime for classical particles, but through which quantum fields can tunnel. Amplitudes for tunnelling processes are encoded in the asymptotic behaviour of solutions to the appropriate background-coupled wave equation. We construct these solutions, in both gravity and QED, using the worldline approach, where tunnelling and particle creation manifest as complex saddle points of a real-time path integral. For the Schwinger effect, these saddles correspond to complex worldlines, while for Hawking radiation, the corresponding worldlines are real, but appear complex when extended beyond a certain coordinate patch.

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arXiv2025

Scattering with total depletion in strong, focussed fields

Theoretical approaches to QED scattering in strong fields typically treat the field as a fixed background with simple spacetime dependence, such as a plane wave. Two major challenges are therefore the inclusion of backreaction (e.g. depletion of the field) and spatial geometry (e.g. focussing). We show here that a solution to one problem can solve the other: even if particle wavefunctions in a chosen focussed background are not known, we show they can be constructed once depletion is accounted for. We demonstrate this by giving the exact wavefunctions in a flying focus beam for which all energy is absorbed by particles scattering on it. In addition we use the wavefunctions to obtain a simple expression for the nonlinear Compton scattering amplitude, comparing with the plane wave case. Our methods thus open a new avenue of investigation in which two previously challenging effects are simultaneously brought under analytic control.

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arXiv2025

Pair creation, backreaction, and resummation in strong fields

We revisit particle creation in strong fields, and backreaction on those fields, from an amplitudes perspective. We describe the strong field by an initial coherent state of photons which we explicitly evolve in time, thus going beyond the background field approximation, and then consider observables which quantify the effects of backreaction. We present expressions for the waveform, vacuum persistence probability, and number of produced photons at next-to-leading order, all of which are impacted by backreaction, along with the number and statistics of produced pairs. We find that converting between in-out (amplitude) and in-in (expectation value) expressions requires explicit resummation of an infinite number of disconnected loop diagrams.

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arXiv2024

Vacuum polarisation effects in impulsive fields

Photons impinging on strong electromagnetic fields can change both momentum and helicity state, due to quantum vacuum polarisation. We investigate these effects in the collision of photons with impulsive PP-waves, which describe e.g. the fields of ultra-boosted charge distributions. We connect our results to vacuum birefringence and quantum reflection in both QED and SUSY QED. We also compare with helicity flip in plane wave backgrounds, exploring how and when known tree-level relations, relating amplitudes in PP-waves and in plane waves, extend to one-loop corrections.

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arXiv2024

Toward double copy on arbitrary backgrounds

Double copy relates scattering amplitudes in a web of gravitational and gauge theories. Although it has seen great success when applied to amplitudes in vacuum, far less is known about double copy in arbitrary gravitational and gauge backgrounds. Focussing on the simplest pair production amplitudes of scalar QCD in a background gauge field, we construct, at next-to-leading order in perturbation theory, a double copy map to particle production in general metrics (and associated axio-dilatons) constructed from the gauge background. We connect our results to convolutional and classical double copy and, turning to examples, identify a class of gauge fields which generate FRW spacetimes via double copy. For this case we are able to conjecture the all-orders form of the double copy map.

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arXiv2024

All-multiplicity amplitudes in impulsive PP-waves from the worldline formalism

We use the worldline formalism to derive Bern-Kosower type Master Formulae for the tree-level scattering of a charged particle and an arbitrary number of photons on impulsive PP-waves, where the coupling of the PP-wave to matter is treated fully non-perturbatively. We show that, in a certain kinematic regime characterised by a semi-classical positive energy condition, both off-shell currents and scattering amplitudes exhibit two novel factorisation structures. First, they may be written as currents in vacuum but with a single additional photon, averaged over the momentum of that photon. This converts the all-orders interaction with the PP-wave into a single effective interaction. Second, the currents and amplitudes may be written as a weighted average of the corresponding quantities in an impulsive plane wave background, with the average taken over all possible field strengths of the plane wave. This generalises a known single-photon result to arbitrary multiplicity.

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arXiv2024

Gravitational Bound Waveforms from Amplitudes

With the aim of computing bound waveforms from scattering amplitudes, we explore gravitational two-body dynamics using the Schwinger-Dyson equations and Bethe-Salpeter recursion. We show that the tree-level scattering waveform admits a natural analytic continuation, in rapidity, to the bound waveform, which we confirm from an independent calculation, in the Post-Newtonian expansion, of the time-domain multipoles at large eccentricity. We demonstrate consistency of this scattering-to-bound map with the Damour-Deruelle prescription for orbital elements in the quasi-Keplerian parametrization (which enters into the evaluation of the multipoles) and with the analytic continuation, in the binding energy, of radiated energy and angular momentum at 3PM.

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arXiv2024

Wave scattering event shapes at high energies

We study the space and properties of global and local observables for radiation emitted in the scattering of a massive scalar field in gauge and gravitational plane-wave backgrounds, in both the quantum and classical theory. We first compute the radiated momentum and angular momentum flow, demonstrating that they are good local observables determined by the amplitude and phase of the waveform. We then focus on the corresponding global observables, which in the gravitational case requires dealing with the collinear divergence of the gravitational Compton cross-section. We show using the KLN theorem that we can obtain an infrared-finite cross-section only by summing over forward scattering diagrams; this suggests dressing the initial state in the direction collinear to the plane wave in order to be able to compute observables integrated over the celestial sphere. Finally, we explore the high-energy behaviour of our observables. We find that classical global observables generically exhibit a power-law mass divergence in electrodynamics and a logarithmic mass divergence in gravity, even when radiation reaction is included. We then show explicitly how this is consistently resolved in the full quantum theory.

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arXiv2024

Scattering amplitudes for self-force

The self-force expansion allows the study of deviations from geodesic motion due to the emission of radiation and its consequent back-reaction. We investigate this scheme within the on-shell framework of semiclassical scattering amplitudes for particles emitting photons or gravitons on a static, spherically symmetric background. We first present the exact scalar 2-point amplitudes for Coulomb and Schwarzschild, from which one can extract classical observables such as the change in momentum due to geodesic motion. We then present, for the first time, the 3-point semiclassical amplitudes for a scalar emitting a photon in Coulomb and a graviton on linearised Schwarzschild, outlining how the latter calculation can be generalized to the fully non-linear Schwarzschild metric. Our results are proper resummations of perturbative amplitudes in vacuum but, notably, are expressed in terms of Hamilton's principal function for the backgrounds, rather than the radial action.

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arXiv2023

Master Formulae for $N$-photon tree level amplitudes in plane wave backgrounds

The presence of strong electromagnetic fields adds huge complexity to QED Feynman diagrams, such that new methods are required to calculate higher-loop and higher-multiplicity scattering amplitudes. Here we use the worldline formalism to present `Master Formulae' for all tree level amplitudes of two massive particles and an arbitrary number of photons, in a plane wave background, in both scalar and spinor QED. The plane wave is treated without approximation throughout, meaning in particular that our formulae are valid in the strong-field regime of current theoretical and experimental interest. We check our results against literature expressions obtainable at low multiplicity via direct Feynman diagram calculations.

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arXiv2023

Scattering amplitudes and electromagnetic horizons

We consider the scattering of charged particles on particular electromagnetic fields which have properties analogous to gravitational horizons. Classically, particles become causally excluded from regions of spacetime beyond a null surface which we identify as the `electromagnetic horizon'. In the quantum theory there is pair production at the horizon via the Schwinger effect, but only one particle from the pair escapes the field. Furthermore, unitarity appears to be violated when crossing the horizon, and there is no well-defined S-matrix. Despite this, we show how to use the perturbiner method to construct `amplitudes' which contain all the dynamical information required to construct observables related to pair creation, and to radiation from particles scattering on the background.

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arXiv2023

All order gravitational waveforms from scattering amplitudes

Waveforms are classical observables associated with any radiative physical process. Using scattering amplitudes, these are usually computed in a weak-field regime to some finite order in the post-Newtonian or post-Minkowskian approximation. Here, we use strong field amplitudes to compute the waveform produced in scattering of massive particles on gravitational plane waves, treated as exact nonlinear solutions of the vacuum Einstein equations. Notably, the waveform contains an infinite number of post-Minkowskian contributions, as well as tail effects. We also provide, and contrast with, analogous results in electromagnetism.

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