Dr. Gustav Mogull

The detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations has prompted great interest from different branches of physics. In particular, there is now an ongoing effort to apply techniques used for calculating scattering amplitudes in quantum field theories (QFTs) to obtaining gravitational wave observables. Unlike more conventional post-Newtonian approaches, which give results as power series in the speed of light, amplitudes-based methods give results as power series in Newton's constant. The two are therefore a complement to each other.

Having worked on QFT-based amplitudes for several years, I am now applying my experience to this growing arena. While considerable effort has gone into computing conservative potentials in the non-spinning case, real-world physics includes other important aspects – such as spin, radiation, and finite-size effects. Here there remain conceptual challenges which I am currently engaging with. I am also interested in applying the so-called double copy, which allows gravitational amplitudes to be obtained as a "square" of Yang-Mills amplitudes. As the latter are generally much easier to calculate, this provides a useful computational shortcut.

Publications
Here are links to my publications: from Spires, and from the ADS database.