All-Orders Classical Soft Graviton Theorems in the Newtonian Limit and Beyond

Abstract

The classical soft graviton theorem aims to determine certain terms in the early- and late-time tails of the gravitational waveform produced in a scattering process, using only the asymptotic momenta of the scattered objects. In this paper we find an infinite series of leading-logarithmic tail terms in the Newtonian limit, where the incoming and outgoing particles move slowly, but the scattering itself can be violent. The all-orders conjecture of Alessio, Di Vecchia and Heissenberg agrees with our results for two-particle scattering, but does not hold in general when the initial or final state contains three or more particles. We also propose an all-orders conjecture for these tails beyond the Newtonian limit, but do not prove it. Nevertheless, the conjecture passes several nontrivial consistency checks.