On-shell recursion and soft theorems for worldline quantum field theory

Abstract

We derive a set of on-shell recursion relations for amplitudes in worldline quantum field theory (WQFT), an effective theory of gravity coupled to a massive worldline which is relevant for computing classical gravitational observables. We overcome the poor large-$z$ falloff of amplitudes under an all-line complex momentum deformation by deriving and exploiting a new soft-graviton theorem in the presence of a worldline. This theorem generalizes the leading (Weinberg) and subleading soft theorems with additional contributions due to soft emission from the worldline. Our main result is a $d$-dimensional recursion formula, expressing any $n$-graviton rational amplitude in terms of lower-point amplitudes from WQFT and pure gravity. Using the soft-worldline theorem, we can obtain amplitudes with any number of external worldline fluctuations from the corresponding all-graviton amplitudes, making the recursion sufficient to construct any rational amplitude of the theory. We verify our results by explicitly computing two-graviton and three-graviton amplitudes.