Thibault Damour’s research while affiliated with Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies and other places

We present a new approach to the conservative dynamics of binary systems, within the effective one-body (EOB) framework, based on the use of a Lagrange multiplier to impose the mass-shell constraint. When applied to the post-Minkowskian (PM) description of the two-body problem in Einsteinian gravity, this Lagrange-EOB (LEOB) approach allows for a new formulation of the conservative dynamics that avoids the drawbacks of the recursive definition of EOB-PM Hamiltonians. Using state-of-the-art values of the waveform and radiation reaction, based on factorized and resummed post-Newtonian (PN) expressions, we apply our new formalism to the construction of an aligned-spin, quasi-circular, inspiralling EOB waveform model, called LEOB-PM, that incorporates analytical information up to the 4PM level, completed by 4PN contributions up to the sixth order in eccentricity, in the orbital sector, and by 4.5PN contributions, in the spin-orbit sector. In the nonspinning case, we find, for the first time, that an uncalibrated LEOB-PM model delivers EOB/NR unfaithfulness (with the Advanced LIGO noise in the total mass range $10-200M_\odot$) of at most $1\%$ over all the nonspinning dataset of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetime (SXS) Numerical Relativity (NR) catalog up to mass ratio q=15, also yielding excellent phasing agreement with the q=32 configuration of the RIT catalog. When NR-informing the dynamics of the model (both orbital and spinning sectors) by using only 17 SXS dataset, we find that the EOB/NR unfaithfulness (compared to 530 spin-aligned SXS waveforms) has a median value of $5.39\times 10^{-4}$ reaching at most $\sim 1\%$ in some of the high-spin corners. Our finding shows that the LEOB approach is a promising route towards robustly incorporating both PM and PN information in the EOB description of the dynamics.

We study the number of propagating degrees of freedom, at non-linear order, in torsion gravity theories, a class of modified theories of gravity that include a propagating torsion in addition to the metric. We focus on a three-parameter subfamily of theories (``torsion bigravity") that contains, at linear order, only two physical excitations: a massless spin-2 one (with two degrees of freedom) and a massive spin-2 one (with five degrees of freedom). We study the dynamics of the massive spin-2 field in the limit where the torsion field decouples from the metric. The number of degrees of freedom of the torsion field is found to {\it change, at non-linear order, from five to nine}.

We look for a classical double-copy-inspired relation between gravity and electrodynamics by connecting the descriptions of the scattering of two point masses, and of two point charges, in terms of perturbative (post-Minkowskian or post-Lorentzian) expansions. We do so by recasting available analytical information within the effective-one-body formalism using Kerr–Schild gauges in both cases. Working at the third perturbative level, we find that the usual linear relation (holding in the probe limit) between the adimensionalized electric potential, ϕ~=GMe1e2ϕel, and the Schwarzschild-like gravitational one, Φgrav, is deformed, in the comparable-mass, comparable-charge, case, into a nonlinear relation which becomes universal in the high energy limit: Φgrav=2ϕ~−5ϕ~2+18ϕ~3.

The gravitational interaction of (classical and quantum) spinning bodies is currently the focus of many works using a variety of approaches. This note is a comment on a short paper by Jean-Marie Souriau, now reprinted in the GRG Golden Oldies collection. Souriau’s short 1970 note was a pioneering contribution to a symplectic description of the dynamics of spinning particles in general relativity which remained somewhat unnoticed. We explain the specificity of Souriau’s approach and emphasize its potential interest within the current flurry of activity on the gravitational interaction of spinning particles.

We compute the conservative scattering angle of two classical charged particles at the sixth order in electromagnetic coupling, and at the fourth order in velocity, thereby going beyond the current state of the art [fifth order in coupling, derived by Bern {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{132}, 251601 (2024)]. Our result is obtained by using the electromagnetic version of the Effective One-Body formalism to transfer information from the exact circular binary-charge solution of Schild [Phys. Rev. \textbf{131}, 2762 (1963)] to the post-Lorentzian expansion of the scattering angle.

Using the multipolar post-Minkowskian formalism, we compute the frequency-domain waveform generated by the gravitational scattering of two nonspinning bodies at the fourth post-Minkowskian order (O(G4), or two-loop order), and at the fractional second post-Newtonian accuracy [O(v4/c4)]. The waveform is decomposed in spin-weighted spherical harmonics and the needed radiative multipoles, Uℓm(ω),Vℓm(ω), are explicitly expressed in terms of a small number of master integrals. The basis of master integrals contains both (modified) Bessel functions, and solutions of inhomogeneous Bessel equations with Bessel-function sources. We show how to express the latter in terms of Meijer G functions. The low-frequency expansion of our results is checked against existing classical soft theorems. We also complete our previous results on the O(G2) bremsstrahlung waveform by computing the O(G3) spectral densities of radiated energy and momentum, in the rest frame of one body, at the thirtieth order in velocity.

We compute the purely local-in-time (scale-free and logarithm-free) part of the conservative dynamics of gravitationally interacting two-body systems at the fourth post-Minkowskian order, and at the thirtieth order in velocity. The gauge-invariant content of this fourth post-Minkowskian local dynamics is given in two ways: (i) its contribution to the on-shell action (for both hyperboliclike and ellipticlike motions); and (ii) its contribution to the effective one-body Hamiltonian (in energy gauge). Our computation capitalizes on the tutti frutti approach [D. Bini et al., Novel approach to binary dynamics: Application to the fifth post-Newtonian level, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 231104 (2019)] and on recent post-Minkowskian advances [Z. Bern et al., Scattering amplitudes, the tail effect, and conservative binary dynamics at O(G4), Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 161103 (2022); C. Dlapa et al., Conservative dynamics of binary systems at fourth post-Minkowskian order in the large-eccentricity expansion, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 161104 (2022); C. Dlapa et al., Local in time conservative binary dynamics at fourth post-Minkowskian order, 132, 221401 (2024)].

The worldlines (in harmonic coordinates) of two gravitationally interacting massive bodies at the second post-Minkowskian order are described in explicit form. Both the conservative case and the radiation-reacted case are considered. We use our results to check the changes, during scattering, of the individual momenta, as well as of the total angular momentum. High post-Newtonian order values of the $O(G^2)$ radiation-reaction acceleration components are provided for checks of future post-Newtonian computations.