Appears in collection : Balzan Conference on Open Issues in Gravitation

Analytic results for black hole scattering events may be used to inform gravitational waveform models and resum infinite contributions to the conventional post-Newtonian potential of the binary system. In recent work, we have reached unprecedented precision in the weak-field expansion of these processes, namely fifth order in Newton’s constant and second order in self-force effects. This progress builds on methods originally developed in quantum field theory and collider physics. In this talk, I will present our approach, which models black holes as point-like particles and yields analytic predictions for scattering observables involving remarkable mathematical structures, most notably Calabi–Yau periods. These results capture several physical effects, including radiative energy loss, recoil, and nonlocal tail and memory effects.