The soft-photon theorem is the following statement due to Weinberg:
Consider an amplitude M involving some incoming and some outgoing particles. Now, consider the same amplitude with an additional soft-photon (ωphoton→0) coupled to one of the particles. Call this amplitude M′. The two amplitudes are related by
M′=Mηqp⋅ϵp⋅pγ−iηε
where p is the momentum of the particle that the photon couples to, ϵ is the polarization of the photon and pγ is the momentum of the soft-photon. η=1 for outgoing particles and η=−1 for incoming ones. Finally, q is the charge of the particle.
The most striking thing about this theorem (to me) is the fact that the proportionality factor relating M and M′ is independent of the type of particle that the photon couples to. It seems quite amazing to me that even though the coupling of photons to scalars, spinors, etc. takes such a different form, you still end up getting the same coupling above.
While I can show that this is indeed true for all the special cases of interest, my question is: Is there a general proof (or understanding) that describes this universal coupling of soft-photons?
This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 06:43 (UCT), posted by SE-user Prahar