Feynman amplitudes on moduli spaces of graphs (Q784850)

Summary: This article introduces moduli spaces of coloured graphs on which Feynman amplitudes can be viewed as ``discrete'' volume densities. The basic idea behind this construction is that these moduli spaces decompose into disjoint unions of open cells on which parametric Feynman integrals are defined in a naturalway. Renormalisation of an amplitude translates then into the task of assigning to every cell a finite volume such that boundary relations between neighboring cells are respected. It is shown that this can be organized systematically using a type of Borel-Serre compactification of these moduli spaces. The key point is that in each compactified cell the newly added boundary components have a combinatorial description that resembles the forest structure of subdivergences of the corresponding Feynman diagram.