Infrared Photons and Gravitons

Abstract

It is shown that the infrared divergences arising in the quantum theory of gravitation can be removed by the familiar methods used in quantum electrodynamics. An additional divergence appears when infrared photons or gravitons are emitted from noninfrared external lines of zero mass, but it is proved that for infrared gravitons this divergence cancels in the sum of all such diagrams. (The cancellation does not occur in massless electrodynamics.) The formula derived for graviton bremsstrahlung is then used to estimate the gravitational radiation emitted during thermal collisions in the sun, and we find this to be a stronger source of gravitational radiation (though still very weak) than classical sources such as planetary motion. We also verify the conjecture of Dalitz that divergences in the Coulomb-scattering Born series may be summed to an innocuous phase factor, and we show how this result may be extended to processes involving arbitrary numbers of relativistic or nonrelativistic particles with arbitrary spin.