2023/09/29 by Callum R. T. Jones, Jones, Callum R. T., Michael Ruf +1 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2310.00069
openalex publication_date 2023/09/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We describe an approach to incorporating the physical effects of the absorption of energy by the event horizon of black holes in the scattering amplitudes based post-Minkowskian, point-particle effective description. Absorptive dynamics are incorporated in a model-independent way by coupling the usual point-particle description to an invisible sector of gapless internal degrees-of-freedom. The leading order dynamics of this sector are encoded in the low-energy expansion of a spectral density function obtained by matching an absorption cross section in the ultraviolet description. This information is then recycled using the scattering amplitudes based Kosower-Maybee-O'Connell in-in formalism to calculate the leading absorptive contribution to the impulse and change in rest mass of a Schwarzschild black hole scattering with a second compact body sourcing a massless scalar, electromagnetic or gravitational field. The results obtained are in complete agreement with previous worldline Schwinger-Keldysh calculations and provide an alternative on-shell scattering amplitudes approach to incorporating horizon absorption effects in the gravitational two-body problem.