We continue the approach of [JHEP06 (2023) 167] to attempt to reproduce the classical electromagnetic current of the Kerr solution from the infinite-spin limit of a three-point amplitude with two higher-spin string states and a massless vector. We review the infinite-spin limit of three-point amplitudes along the leading Regge trajectory, which differ from Kerr, and we provide evidence that any sub-leading trajectory parallel to the leading one give the same result. We extend the above investigation to the simplest sub-leading trajectory not parallel to the leading one, containing physical states with the first two harmonics. We compute all three-point amplitudes involving two such states and a massless vector, using both covariant and DDF formalism, and we extract the associated classical infinite-spin limit. Inspired by the leading Regge case, where this limit reproduces the classical electromagnetic current sourced by a rigid rotating string, we derive new classical string solutions containing the first two harmonics and compare the currents they source to the infinite-spin amplitude of the two-harmonic state. We do not see a matching between the two approaches, and we find that the classical behaviour is instead reproduced by the amplitude involving coherent string states. We conclude this paper by discussing common patterns between the different amplitudes we considered, and we conjecture how they can be generalised to reproduce Kerr.

To appear in the memorial volume for Lars Brink

In the first part of this paper I will describe my work together with Lars and in the second part I will give a look at some of Lars's oldest papers.

We introduce a classical version of the loop corrected soft graviton theorem and we use it to compute the universal part of the one-loop (2PM) waveform up to sub-subleading order in the energy ω of the emitted graviton for spinless black holes scattering. In particular, we compute the action of the soft operators on the classically resummed four-point amplitude, that can be written in terms of the exponential of the eikonal phase (and is therefore non-perturbative in the Newton's constant G_N) and then we perform the usual Post-Minkowskian expansion in powers of G_N. We find perfect agreement with the existing 2PM literature at the orders ω⁻¹, log⁡ ω and ω log² ⁡ω, which are universal. Furthermore, we use this method to compute the universal part of the ω log ⁡ω contribution to the 2PM waveform. Even if in the present analysis we limit ourselves to compute the soft 2PM waveform, our general formulae can be used to extract all universal PM orders of the terms connected with the infrared divergences up to non-linear memory contributions, once the impulse at the corresponding precision is known. Our approach, based on the resummed eikonal amplitude, gives a unified picture of the various computations of the classical soft graviton behaviour that are present in the literature since the seminal paper by Weinberg (1965 Phys. Rev. 140 B516–24).

Using universal predictions provided by classical soft theorems, we revisit the energy emission spectrum for gravitational scatterings of compact objects in the low-frequency expansion. We calculate this observable beyond the zero-frequency limit, retaining an exact dependence on the kinematics of the massive objects. This allows us to study independently the ultrarelativistic or massless limit, where we find agreement with the literature, and the small-deflection or post-Minkowskian (PM) limit, where we provide explicit results up to (G⁵). These confirm that the high-velocity limit of a given PM order is smoothly connected to the corresponding massless result whenever the latter is analytic in the Newton constant G. We also provide explicit expressions for the waveforms to order ω⁻¹, log ω, ω(log ω)² in the soft limit, ω → 0, expanded up to sub-subleading PM order, as well as a conjecture for the logarithmic soft terms of the type ωⁿ⁻¹(log ω)ⁿ with n ≥ 3.

Motivated by conceptual problems in quantum theories of gravity, the gravitational eikonal approach, inspired by its electromagnetic predecessor, has been successfully applied to the transplanckian energy collisions of elementary particles and strings since the late eighties, and to string-brane collisions in the past decade. After the direct detection of gravitational waves from black-hole mergers, most of the attention has shifted towards adapting these methods to the physics of black-hole encounters. For such systems, the eikonal exponentiation provides an amplitude-based approach to calculate classical gravitational observables, thus complementing more traditional analytic methods such as the Post-Newtonian expansion, the worldline formalism, or the Effective-One-Body approach. In this review we summarize the main ideas and techniques behind the gravitational eikonal formalism. We discuss how it can be applied in various different physical setups involving particles, strings and branes and then we mainly concentrate on the most recent developments, focusing on massive scalars minimally coupled to gravity, for which we aim at being as self-contained and comprehensive as possible.

We propose two possible eikonal operators encoding the effects of classical radiation as coherent states of gravitons and show how to compute from them different classical observables. In the first proposal, only genuinely propagating gravitons are included, while, in the second, zero-frequency modes are added in order to recover the effects of a static gravitational field. We first calculate the radiated energy-momentum and the change in each particle's momentum, or impulse, to 3PM order finding agreement with the literature. We then calculate the angular momentum of the gravitational field after the collision. In order to do so, we adapt the method of reverse unitarity to the presence of derivatives in the operators describing the angular momentum and reproduce the result of [1] obtained by resumming the small-velocity expansion. As a new application, we derive also the variation in each particle's angular momentum up to 3PM: calculating separately field and particle contributions allows us to check the balance laws explicitly. We also show how the eikonal operator encodes the linear-response formula of Bini-Damour by deriving the linear radiation-reaction contribution to the transverse impulse at 4PM.

I start describing my interaction with Bruno during my thesis and then in his group in Frascati in connection with the calculation of the total cross-section of double bremsstrahlung that, at that time, was considered a good candidate as a monitor reaction for Adone. Then I discuss my transition to S-matrix theory and to the work that brought from the Dual Resonance Model to String Theory. I conclude describing the main results of String Theory in a way that could be followed by non-experts in the field.

By following closely Weinberg’s soft theorem, which captures the 1/ω pole contribution to the amplitude for soft graviton emissions (ω < Λ) on top of an arbitrary background hard process, we calculate the expectation value of the graviton’s angular momentum operator for arbitrary collisions dressed with soft radiation. We find that the result becomes independent of the cutoff Λ on the graviton’s frequency, effectively localizing at ω = 0. In this way, our result captures the contribution to the angular momentum that comes from the zero-frequency modes. Like the soft theorem, our formula has an exact dependence on the kinematics of the hard particles and is only a function of their momenta. As an example, we discuss in some detail the case of the 2 → 2 scattering of spinless particles in General Relativity and N = 8 supergravity.

Starting from the leading soft term of the 5-point amplitude, involving a graviton and two Kerr black holes, that factorises into the product of the elastic amplitude without the graviton and the leading soft factor, we compute the infrared divergent contribution to the imaginary part of the two-loop eikonal. Then, using analyticity and crossing symmetry, we determine the radiative contribution to the real part of the two-loop eikonal and from it the radiative part of the deflection angle for spins aligned to the orbital angular momentum, the loss of angular momentum and the zero frequency limit of the energy spectrum for any spin and for any spin orientation. For spin one we find perfect agreement with recent results obtained with the supersymmetric worldline formalism.

Observables related to the real part of the gravitational eikonal, such as the deflection angle and time delay, have been found so far to have a smooth post-Minkowskian (PM) expansion whose validity extends from the non-relativistic to the most extreme ultra-relativistic (UR) regime, which smoothly connects with massless particle collisions. To describe gravitational radiation, the eikonal phase has to be promoted to a unitary operator for which we motivate a proposal and start discussing properties in the soft-radiation limit. A convergent PM expansion is found to only hold below an UR bound (discussed in the GR literature in the seventies) above which a different expansion is instead needed implying, in general, some non-analyticity in Newton's constant. In this extreme UR regime soft radiative observables receive contributions only from gravitons and are therefore universal. This generalises the pattern discussed in [1] beyond the elastic case.