SUSY in the sky with gravitons

by Prof. Jan Plefka (Humboldt University)

Tuesday 21 Sept 2021, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Berlin

Zoom

The classical gravitational two body problem - relevant for gravitational wave physics - has recently seen advances upon employing perturbative quantum field theory techniques in the post-MInkowskian (weak field) approximation to it. I report on a novel approach based on a worldline quantum field theory that provides an efficient way to compute observables in the gravitational scattering of two massive, spinning objects (black holes, neutron stars or stars) in classical GR. We show that this system of genuine astrophysical interest enjoys a hidden N=2 supersymmetry, at least to the order of spin-squared (quadrupole) interactions in arbitrary D spacetime dimensions. The emitted Bremsstrahlung, the two bodies’ deflection and spin kick are established at NLO in a post-Minkowskian expansion and are indeed invariant under the N=2 supersymmetry transformations.

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