On-shell heavy particle effective theories

Abstract

We introduce on-shell variables for Heavy Particle Effective Theories (HPETs) with the goal of extending Heavy Black Hole Effective Theory to higher spins and of facilitating its application to higher post-Minkowskian orders. These variables inherit the separation of spinless and spin-inclusive effects from the HPET fields, resulting in an explicit spin-multipole expansion of the three-point amplitude for any spin. By matching amplitudes expressed using the on-shell HPET variables to those derived from the one-particle effective action, we find that the spin-multipole expansion of a heavy spin-s particle corresponds exactly to the multipole expansion (up to order 2s) of a Kerr black hole, that is, without needing to take the infinite spin limit. Finally, we show that tree-level radiative processes with same-helicity bosons emitted from a heavy spin-s particle exhibit a spin-multipole universality.