The classical double copy relates solutions to the equations of motion in gauge theory and in gravity. In this paper, we present two double-copy formalisms for relating the Coulomb solution in gauge theory to the two-parameter Janis-Newman-Winicour solution in gravity. The latter is a static, spherically symmetric, asymptotically flat solution that generically includes a dilaton field, but also admits the Schwarzschild solution as a special case. We first present the classical double copy as a perturbative construction, similar to its formulation for scattering amplitudes, and then present it as an exact map, with a novel generalisation of the Kerr-Schild double copy motivated by double field theory. The latter formalism exhibits the relation between the Kerr-Schild classical double copy and the string theory origin of the double copy for scattering amplitudes.

We construct the classical double copy formalism for M-theory. This extends the current state of the art by including the three form potential of eleven dimensional supergravity along with the metric. The key for this extension is to construct a Kerr-Schild type Ansatz for exceptional field theory. This Kerr-Schild Ansatz then allows us to find the solutions of charged objects such as the membrane from a set of single copy fields. The exceptional field theory formalism then automatically produces the IIB Kerr-Schild ansatz allowing the construction of the single copy for the fields of IIB supergravity (with manifest SL(2) symmetry).

We construct the off-shell recursion for gravity and the graviton current for the perturbative double field theory (DFT). We first formulate the perturbative DFT, which is equivalent but simpler to perturbative general relativity, to all-orders in fluctuations of generalised metric. The perturbative action and equations of motion (EoM) are derived to arbitrary order for pure gravity case. We then derive the graviton off-shell recursion, the gravity counterpart of the Berends-Giele recursion in Yang-Mills theory, through the so-called perturbiner method using the EoM of the perturbative DFT. We solve the recursion iteratively and obtain the graviton off-shell currents explicitly. We then discuss the classical double copy for the off-shell currents. We present the current KLT relation for gravity by extending the result proposed by Mizera and Skrzypek for the non-gravitational effective field theories. The relation represents graviton currents by squaring gluon currents with the KLT kernel up to gauge transformation and regular terms that do not have any pole. Finally we discuss the off-shell conservation of currents for nonlinear gauge choices.

We derive all-order expressions for perturbations of the Einstein-Hilbert action and the Einstein equation with the general n-th order terms. To this end, we employ Cheung and Remmen’s perturbation conventions both in tensor density and the usual metric tensor formalisms, including the Einstein-dilaton theory. Remarkably, we find minimal building blocks that generate the entire perturbations for each of our formulations. We show that the number of terms of perturbations grows linearly as the order of perturbations increases. We regard our results as the reference and discuss how to derive perturbations in other conventions from the reference. As a consistency check, we compute graviton scattering amplitudes using the perturbiner method based on the perturbative Einstein equation. Finally we discuss how to generalise the results to curved backgrounds and incorporate additional matter.