Feynman Motives by Matilde Marcolli, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

This book presents recent and ongoing research work aimed at understanding the mysterious relation between the computations of Feynman integrals in perturbative quantum field theory and the theory of motives of algebraic varieties and their periods. One of the main questions in the field is understanding when the residues of Feynman integrals in perturbative quantum field theory evaluate to periods of mixed Tate motives. The question originates from the occurrence of multiple zeta values in Feynman integrals calculations observed by Broadhurst and Kreimer. Two different approaches to the subject are described. The first, a ""bottom-up"" approach, constructs explicit algebraic varieties and periods from Feynman graphs and parametric Feynman integrals. This approach, which grew out of work of Bloch Esnault Kreimer and was more recently developed in joint work of Paolo Aluffi and the author, leads to algebro-geometric and motivic versions of the Feynman rules of quantum field theory and concentrates on explicit constructions of motives and classes in the Grothendieck ring of varieties associated to Feynman integrals. While the varieties obtained in this way can be arbitrarily complicated as motives, the part of the cohomology that is involved in the Feynman integral computation might still be of the special mixed Tate kind. | Feynman Motives by Matilde Marcolli, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters