Amplitudes, observables, and classical scattering

Abstract

We present a formalism for computing classically measurable quantities directly from on-shell quantum scattering amplitudes. We discuss the ingredients needed for obtaining the classical result, and show how to set up the calculation to derive the result efficiently. We do this without specializing to a specific theory. We study in detail two examples in electrodynamics: the momentum transfer in spinless scattering to next-to-leading order, and the momentum radiated to leading order.