Advances in gravitational-wave predictions through quantum field theory methods

Motivated by the success of current gravitational-wave detectors, there has been significant progress in applying ideas from particle physics to the study of the inspiral problem for compact objects in classical general relativity. In particular, the methods and tools developed in perturbative quantum field theory arise most naturally when applied to the post-Minkowskian expansion, which is an expansion in Newton’s coupling constant. In this talk, I will provide an overview of current approaches and show how the state of the art for non-spinning black-hole binaries has been achieved using an effective field theory of point particles. Importantly, I will also discuss how results obtained for scattering can be translated to the phenomenologically relevant case of merging black holes.