Gravity seminar - Oliver Long Seminar

Event details

Title: Black hole scattering in the strong-field regime: Merging post-Minkowskian theory with numerical methods

Abstract: Recent advances in modelling unbound binary black hole interactions have been driven by the successful integration of scattering amplitude techniques from particle physics within post-Minkowskian (PM) theory. While this flat-space expansion offers valuable insights, it becomes limited in the strong-field regime, where numerical approaches are essential to capture high-curvature effects accurately. In this talk, I will present recent progress in modelling unbound binary interactions through the self-force (SF) formalism and numerical relativity (NR) simulations. I will demonstrate how SF data can be used to resum the PM series, providing accurate predictions for scattering angles across all separations. Additionally, I will present new unbound NR results, highlighting the remarkable consistency between these simulations and PM-informed effective-one-body models.