Toward double copy on arbitrary backgrounds

A bstract Double copy relates scattering amplitudes in a web of gravitational and gauge theories. Although it has seen great success when applied to amplitudes in vacuum, far less is known about double copy in arbitrary gravitational and gauge backgrounds. Focussing on the simplest pair production amplitudes of scalar QCD in a background gauge field, we construct, at next-to-leading order in perturbation theory, a double copy map to particle production in general metrics (and associated axio-dilatons) constructed from the gauge background. We connect our results to convolutional and classical double copy and, turning to examples, identify a class of gauge fields which generate FRW spacetimes via double copy. For this case we are able to conjecture the all-orders form of the double copy map.