A comment on boundary correlators: soft omissions and the massless S-matrix

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Authors: Eivind Jørstad, Sabrina Pasterski
Cited by: 1
References: 47

Abstract

Abstract We revisit the extrapolate dictionary for massless scattering in flat spacetimes and identify a soft contribution that is typically dropped from the saddle point approximation. We show how to consistently regulate the extrapolation to include both the soft and hard components and identify the boundary correlation functions as a combination of electric and magnetic branch Carrollian correlators. This implies in particular that there are contributions to these boundary correlators that are non-distributional on the celestial sphere. Finally, we close by exploring the utility of the magnetic branch for extracting celestial data from low point correlators: connecting our results to recent work on flat space extrapolate dictionaries and celestial shadow amplitudes.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Galaxies: Formation Evolution Phenomena Cosmology and Gravitation Theories Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena

Publication details

Journal / source
Classical and Quantum Gravity
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Volume
43
Issue
6
Pages
065013–065013
Publication date
4 March 2026