Published July 2013 | Version Submitted
Journal Article Open

Quantum field theory over F_1

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

In this paper we discuss some questions about geometry over the field with one element, motivated by the properties of algebraic varieties that arise in perturbative quantum field theory. We follow the approach to F_1-geometry based on torified-schemes. We first discuss some simple necessary conditions in terms of the Euler characteristic and classes in the Grothendieck ring, then we give a blowup formula for torified varieties and we show that the wonderful compactifications of the graph configuration spaces, that arise in the computation of Feynman integrals in position space, admit an F_1-structure. By a similar argument we show that the moduli spaces of curves M_(0,n) admit an F_1-structure, thus answering a question of Manin. We also discuss conditions on hyperplane arrangements, a possible notion of embedded F_1-structure and its relation to Chern classes, and questions on Chern classes of varieties with regular torifications.

Additional Information

© 2013 Elsevier B.V. Received 7 October 2012. Received in revised form 20 February 2013. Accepted 2 March 2013. Available online 14 March 2013. The first author was supported for this project by a Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. The second author is supported by NSF grants DMS-0901221, DMS-1007207, DMS-1201512, and PHY-1205440. The second author thanks Paolo Aluffi for many useful discussions and for a careful reading of the manuscript, Javier López-Peña for reading an earlier draft of the paper and offering comments and suggestions, and Spencer Bloch for useful conversations about [2]. The authors thank the referee for useful comments and remarks.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
38885
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20130611-084746994

Related works

Funding

Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)
NSF
DMS-0901221
NSF
DMS-1007207
NSF
DMS-1201512
NSF
PHY-1205440

Dates

Created
2013-06-11
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-09
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

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Mathematics Department