An S-matrix approach to gravitational-wave physics.

Abstract

The detection of gravitational waves emitted by binary systems has opened a new astronomical window into the Universe. We describe recent advances in the field of scattering amplitudes applied to the post-Minkowskian expansion, and the extraction of the effective two-body gravitational potential. The techniques presented here apply to any effective field theory of gravity and are not restricted to four-dimensional Einstein gravity. This article is part of the theme issue 'The future of mathematical cosmology, Volume 2'.