poratlu

@charliewood on Jean Écalle’s resurgence theory—how to go beyond the pertubation theory of divergent series in quantum field theory, to the underlying exact result—

https://www.quantamagazine.org/alien-calculus-could-save-particle-physics-from-infinities-20230406/

I can’t remotely keep up with this, but it strikes me as a very big deal.

#JeanÉcalle #DivergentSeries #QFT

‘Alien Calculus’ Could Save Particle Physics From Infinities | Quanta Magazine

In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. Physicists get around this by just ignoring certain parts of the equations — an approach that provides approximate answers. But by using the techniques known as “resurgence,” researchers hope to end the infinities and end up with perfectly precise predictions.

Quanta Magazine
Apr 10, 2023 at 11:33amWeb
Show threadRyanJan 16, 2025

@poratlu @charliewood

I don't grok it either but the equations are beautiful. And this is infinitely tied to TQFT and CFT in some quite unexpected ways as well; for instance, the transseries essentially describes the conformal blocks of a dilaton field