Description
Abstract: The weak-field regime of black hole scattering is naturally described in the post-
Minkowskian (PM) approximation. Here, the gravitational metric is expanded
around flat Minkowski space-time and the black holes appear as point-like
particles in an effective field theory. High-precision computations of observables of
this system can — via a mapping to bound dynamics — be used to inform
gravitational waveform models relevant to current gravitational wave detectors. In
this lecture, I will give an accessible introduction to the main physical assumptions
and methods of PM computations. As a concrete example, I will consider the
calculation of the total energy lost by the black holes to gravitational waves at the
leading 3PM order. Several aspects of this example illustrate the challenges at
higher perturbative orders and for other physical observables.
