Heavy Black Hole Effective Theory

Abstract: We formulate an effective field theory describing large mass scalars and fermions minimally coupled to gravity. The operators of this effective field theory are organized in powers of the transfer momentum divided by the mass of the matter field, an expansion which lends itself to the efficient extraction of classical contributions from loop amplitudes in both the post-Newtonian and post-Minkowskian regimes. We use this effective field theory to calculate the classical and leading quantum gravitational scattering amplitude of two heavy spin-1/2 particles at the second post-Minkowskian order.