
HU-EP-22/32-RTG
Linear Response, Hamiltonian and Radiative Spinning Two-Body Dynamics
Gustav Uhre Jakobsen 1, 2, 3, ∗and Gustav Mogull 1, 2, 3, †
1Institut f¨ur Physik und IRIS Adlershof, Humboldt Universit¨at zu Berlin,
Zum Großen Windkanal 2, 12489 Berlin, Germany
2Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Am M¨uhlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
3Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
Using the spinning, supersymmetric Worldline Quantum Field Theory formalism we compute the
momentum impulse and spin kick from a scattering of two spinning black holes or neutron stars up to
quadratic order in spin at third post-Minkowskian (PM) order, including radiation-reaction effects
and with arbitrarily mis-aligned spin directions. Parts of these observables, both conservative and
radiative, are also inferred from lower-PM scattering data by extending Bini and Damour’s linear
response formula to include mis-aligned spins. By solving Hamilton’s equations of motion we also
use a conservative scattering angle to infer a complete 3PM two-body Hamiltonian including finite-
size corrections and mis-aligned spin-spin interactions. Finally, we describe mappings to the bound
two-body dynamics for aligned spin vectors: including a numerical plot of the binding energy for
circular orbits compared with numerical relativity, analytic confirmation of the NNLO PN binding
energy and the energy loss over successive orbits.
The need for accurate waveform templates for com-
parison with gravitational wave signals coming from the
LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA detectors of binary merger
events [1–6] — and in the future LISA, the Einstein Tele-
scope and Cosmic Explorer [7] — has provoked enormous
interest in the gravitational two-body problem. One of
the most important physical properties influencing the
paths of massive objects following inspiral trajectories,
which as they accelerate produce gravitational waves, is
their spins. Accurately determining the spins of black
holes and neutron stars in binary orbits yields crucial
information about their origins: if the spins are approxi-
mately aligned with the orbital plane, then this suggests
formation of the binary system by slow accretion of mat-
ter; if they are mis-aligned (precessing), then this indi-
cates formation of the binary by a random capture event.
A fruitful path has been effective field theory (EFT)-
based methods, which tackle the inspiral stage of the
gravitational two-body problem using its natural sepa-
ration of length scales [8–12]: the size of the massive
bodies is far less than their separation, which in turn is
far less than their distance from us, the observer. Partial
results for the non-spinning two-body Hamiltonian are
available up to sixth post-Newtonian (PN) order [13–18];
in the spinning case a body-fixed frame on the world-
line is often used [19–22], and results are available up to
N3LO in the spin-orbit sector [23–25] and in the spin-spin
sector [26–33].
However, an excellent alternative approach to the
bound two-body problem comes by way of studying two-
body scattering: here it is natural to define gauge-
invariant scattering observables in terms of the states
at past-/future-infinity, where the gravitational field
is weak. It is also natural here to adopt the post-
Minkowskian (PM) expansion in Newton’s constant G,
∗gustav.uhre.jakobsen@physik.hu-berlin.de
†gustav.mogull@aei.mpg.de
which resums terms from infinitely high velocities in the
post-Newtonian (PN) series. One may use analytic con-
tinuation to directly produce PM observables for bound
orbits [34–37]; alternatively, conservative scattering ob-
servables may be used to infer a Hamiltonian for the
two-body system [38–44]. A more sophisticated version
of this strategy is to infer an effective-one-body (EOB)
Hamiltonian [45–49], which may be extended to include
spin [50–54] and resums information from the test-body
limit.
The Worldline Quantum Field Theory (WQFT) is a
new formalism for producing gravitational scattering ob-
servables [55–63]. It builds on the highly successful PM-
based worldline EFT approach [64], which has been used
to produce scattering observables at 3PM [65–67] and
4PM orders [68–71]; the worldline EFT has also produced
gravitational Bremsstrahlung and radiative observables
including tidal effects and spin [72–75]. The WQFT goes
a step further by quantizing worldline degrees of free-
dom, which bypasses the need for intermediate off-shell
objects such as the effective action. A supersymmetric
extension to the worldline accounts for quadratic-in-spin
effects [57,58], conveniently avoiding the typical use of
a body-fixed frame. In Ref. [61] we used the WQFT to
produce conservative scattering observables — the mo-
mentum impulse ∆pµ
iand spin kick ∆Sµ
i— at 3PM or-
der.
In this paper, we upgrade these observables to in-
clude radiation-reaction (dissipative) effects, using the
Schwinger-Keldysh in-in formalism [76–80] that has re-
cently been incorporated into both the WQFT and PM-
based worldline EFT frameworks [63,67]. Our results
confirm the radiated four-momentum Pµ
rad recently pre-
dicted with the worldline EFT approach [75]. Given these
new observables, we postulate and confirm an extension
to Bini and Damour’s linear response relation [81–83]
which allows us to predict terms in the conservative and
radiative parts of the full scattering observables, depend-
ing on their behavior under the time-reversal operation
arXiv:2210.06451v3 [hep-th] 19 Jul 2023