Manifest color-kinematics duality for point particles interacting with self-dual fields

Abstract

We find that point particles interacting with a self-dual Yang-Mills field and self-dual gravity manifestly satisfy color-kinematics duality at the level of action. In a similar way color-kinematics duality also holds for a scalar field minimally coupled to a self-dual Yang-Mills field and self-dual gravity. By applying the appropriate limiting procedure to these scalar field theories we reproduce point particle theories we started from. This allows us to connect worldline color-kinematics duality to amplitude color-kinematics duality in field theory. Considering that point particles act as sources of classical solutions, our results may be regarded as a step towards establishing a precise relation between the amplitude and the classical double copies in the self-dual sector. Finally, we briefly mention that the extension of this discussion to the higher-spin case suggests that scalar point particles cannot interact with chiral higher-spin fields.