Tuesday, September 27, 2016

quantum field theory - Understanding Weinberg's soft-photon theorem



The soft-photon theorem is the following statement due to Weinberg:



Consider an amplitude ${\cal M}$ involving some incoming and some outgoing particles. Now, consider the same amplitude with an additional soft-photon ($\omega_{\text{photon}} \to 0$) coupled to one of the particles. Call this amplitude ${\cal M}'$. The two amplitudes are related by $$ {\cal M}' = {\cal M} \frac{\eta q p \cdot \epsilon}{p \cdot p_\gamma - i \eta \varepsilon} $$ where $p$ is the momentum of the particle that the photon couples to, $\epsilon$ is the polarization of the photon and $p_\gamma$ is the momentum of the soft-photon. $\eta = 1$ for outgoing particles and $\eta = -1$ for incoming ones. Finally, $q$ is the charge of the particle.



The most striking thing about this theorem (to me) is the fact that the proportionality factor relating ${\cal M}$ and ${\cal M}'$ is independent of the type of particle that the photon couples to. It seems quite amazing to me that even though the coupling of photons to scalars, spinors, etc. takes such a different form, you still end up getting the same coupling above.


While I can show that this is indeed true for all the special cases of interest, my question is: Is there a general proof (or understanding) that describes this universal coupling of soft-photons?



Answer



The universality of the coupling of the photon to charged particles exhibited by this formula is only valid in the limit of ultrasoft photons. This is also known as the eikonal approximation, in which the photon couples only to the charge x velocity of the charged particle.


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