On the universality of soft emission beyond the next-to-soft order

Abstract

The Low-Burnett-Kroll theorem (extended to non-abelian gauge theory) states that the tree-level emission amplitude of a soft gauge boson from an arbitrary hard process can be expressed in terms of the non-radiative amplitude including the next-to-soft term. Reformulating the soft theorem in the framework of an on-shell effective theory leads to a natural gauge-invariant split into an external and internal emission process to any order in the soft expansion. In this framework, we derive a compact expression for the all-order external emission amplitude expressed in terms of the non-radiative amplitude, and express the local emission amplitude through a single gauge-invariant operator at every order beyond the next-to-soft one. For scalar QCD, we compare the number of Lorentz- and $SU(3)$-invariant amplitudes for the radiative and non-radiative hard process with an arbitrary number of scalar quarks and antiquarks.